


The Great Games

by 372259



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: District 2, F/M, Happy Cersei, Unreliable Narrator, jk doesn't last, things aren't what they seem, trust POVs as far as you can throw them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2019-11-16 00:20:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/372259/pseuds/372259
Summary: "Are you afraid? Good... In real life, the monsters win."The 13 Districts of Westeros take turns hosting an annual inter-district competition. "The Great Games" is a grand tourney where each District chooses one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins fame and fortune, but some Districts have extra incentives...Gendry Lannister wins the 72nd Games, and it looks like his prize is Arya Stark of the South.(Only it's really Gendry Baratheon and Arya Stark of the North, who would both sooner save each other rather than hurt each other, so how did it come to this?)This is a "pseudo" Hunger Games crossover, but there are ONLY Game of Thrones/ A Song of Ice & Fire characters. NOTE: the UPDATED chapters of this story are on fanfiction.net under the author name "themirrorminder.372259"





	1. how to capture a prize

**_Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns Hunger Games, George R. R. Martin owns A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones, and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*_ **

* * *

**_Summary:_ **

**_The Great Games: a grand tourney where each district allows up to one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some Districts have extra incentives. (OR: the one where Gendry wins, and it looks like Arya is his prize)_ **

**_A/N: We're in a pseudo-Hunger Games verse in terms of technology. No Capitol, just 13 Districts who take turns hosting an annual inter-district competition that gives the Victor fame and fortune._ **

* * *

**The Great Games**

* * *

**Chapter 1:**

_how to capture a prize_

* * *

_"_ _Are you afraid? Good. You're in the Great Game now. And the Great Game is terrifying. The only people who aren't afraid... are madmen."_

_~ Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones_

* * *

Cersei Lannister had been wholly content to spend the warm afternoon lounging on her patio, with sangrias and margaritas chasing each other down her throat. So, how did she end up off her chaise, and instead in her air-conditioned parlor, with tanning oil plating her skin to her silk house robe? Why is she half standing and half freezing in front of unwanted visitors?

The answer is making annoying muffled protests on her venetian floor.

In front of Cersei, her son's malicious minions have chained down an infamous battered young woman. Cersei notes blood oozing from various wounds on the little heathen who is being forced to her knees, and so gestures to the nearest servant to  _do something about it_  before stray cruor ruins the pearl tiles she had imported from District 1. The nervous attendant scurries away to acquire a towel, and his anxious obedience reminds her of the stuttering servant boy from earlier. The one who had so hesitantly interrupted her blissfully relaxed, pleasantly buzzed state with his stuttering ( _"M-my lady, y-you've guests.")_

She should have ignored the blundering boy.

Speaking of blundering boys, Ned Dayne, her son's flaxen-haired best friend, shakes the metal chains leashing down the girl. The bound brat snarls behind the cloth wrapped around her mouth. The girl then turns her unattractive scowl towards Cersei, who is can't help but be curious over this girl who she has heard of for years, and yet never deigned to see.

 _'Your eyes are the colour of ash, and your hair is the colour of dirt.'_  Cersei thinks derisively.  _'How very fitting, given where you come from'_.

Upon further inspection, there is a glassy glaze tinging the girl's angry eyes. Suddenly, Cersei understands how such a usually incompetent band of boys were able to subdue their prey. Cersei briefly notes the lack of mortal wounds on her son's crowd. They would have returned worse than a little banged up had they not resorted to drugging the girl.

She feels a slight tremor in her hand, a dryness in her throat, and a craving burning in her stomach.  _'Why in the Seven Hells am I wasting my time with this charade?'_

In truth, Cersei is irritated that she was interrupted for this farce. She wants nothing more than to return to her vodka and veranda. So she pastes on a practiced smile, and invites (commands) the de facto leader of the group to speak. "Ned," she begins in a tone too saccharine, "I believe you boys were well aware that she should be delivered to my son's newly won home,  _not_   _mine._ "

Ned, the only one of her son's nauseatingly sycophantic followers that she can sometimes tolerate (mostly just because he's so nice to look at), has the good sense to appear chastised as he responds. "We couldn't get into his new house yet… since… well… since he hasn't technically won yet." As if to avoid offense, he rushes to add on, "even though we all know he will win,  _obviously_ , but still... so we don't know where to keep her for him. After he took down that District 9 dude, the only one who was any actual competition, we knew she was going to run if we didn't, well, stop her... and, well, he told us to… he told us to make sure she didn't run."

Cersei nods patiently at Ned's babbling, keeping her expression placid. It is a good thing the boy has his looks and body, since he is clearly lacking in the head. He is even luckier the little hellion didn't damage his pretty face (by his limp, it looks like only his leg was a casualty of her defiance). Speaking of, Cersei turns her appraising eyes back to the girl.

' _Passably pretty'_ , she concludes from what little she can appreciate behind the dried sweat, strands of blood, and layer of grime. The girl has a misleadingly delicate face, with fine cheek bones and big eyes, but she looks shorter than expected. Moreover, the girl is wrapped up thoroughly in chains and rope ( _just like she imagines offerings to gods once were_ ). So much so, that Cersei can't make out the girl's form.  _'You must be fit and strong, given what I've heard of your… infamous reputation from the Training Centre.'_

Cersei wonders if that is the appeal of the girl to her brutally beautiful son: the challenge of taming the knife-throwing hellion with an angelic face, crude tongue, and skilled hands. In time with Cersei's wandering thoughts, the girl twists in a manner that is almost successful at loosening the group's hold on the restraints, but one of her son's lackeys (the one with horrifically blotchy skin, unkempt long hair, and pale close-set eyes; as well as a newly bruised neck, and recent black eye) tightens the chain that he holds and jeers something at the prisoner.

 _'I wonder if I should switch over to red instead of white for my next sangria.'_  The higher ethanol concentration beckons Cersei like a siren, and momentarily distracts her, so she doesn't hear exactly what the nameless lackey sneers to the petulant prisoner. It was likely quite lurid, given both the fool's exaggerated leer at the girl's body and Ned's horrified expression. The latter is clearly shocked of the other boy's crassness in front of the woman who is not only Gendry's mother but the  _Mayor's_  daughter. Ned chastises the graceless lackey accordingly ( _"Watch your tongue Ramsay! You can't just say things like that in front of the Mayor's daughter. Are you entirely classless? Don't you–"_ ).

Cersei has enough. She grows more and more exasperated at the stupidity of the fools her son surrounds himself with, and cuts off Ned's reprimand. "You may deposit her in one of the guest rooms in my West Wing for now." She concedes. "Lead them to it," she instructs to the same servant boy who had dared disturb her afternoon. He nods repeatedly, eager to please her, and begins to guide the group away. She figures Ned's attempt at grace (and pleasingly tight shirt) earns them the warning that she tosses over her shoulder on her way back to her haven. "Boys, do be careful about leaving any visible marks on her, Gendry will be… quite wroth if his prize is damaged."

She continues walking towards her afternoon plans. She doesn't need to be facing the boys to know that cold claws up their spines at the thought of her son's wrath. She hears the girl (' _Arya',_  Cersei tells herself sarcastically, ' _might as well call the newest tenant by her name'_ )being forcibly dragged towards the stairs leading to the second floor of the West Wing. Cersei wonders how long it will take for Gendry to destroy the wretch. She wonders what her son has planned for his little obsession, and her stomach inadvertently rolls when she recalls just how…  _creative_  Gendry had been with the girl in the past.

 _'Red_.' She decides, wondering why she even bothered with white in the first place.

* * *

_{ Masks are effective when facing blurred vision }_

_"Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many."_

_~ Phaedrus_

* * *

**End of Chapter 1**

* * *

**Review pretty please :) What do you think of Cersei? What do you think of Cersei being Gendry's mother? What do think of the writing, grammar, plot pace, dialogue, etc?**

* * *

**Preview of Chapter 2: how to breed monsters**

Gendry isn't really her son anymore anyways. He's the son her mother never gave her father.

...

"There are plenty of ways to break little girls, Gendry. Explore your options."

...

(she bred a monster, she isn't surprised)

...

Tywin laments over the creature in front of him... and wonders how much of his grandson's cruelty was born from his own relentless training of the boy, versus how much was due to his daughter's indifference... It is cruelty that is unmatched; he remembers every detail of the gory report given by ... of what horrors the boy was capable of at just 15 years old (of what he did to the girl he now wants to own).

* * *

**_A/N: I've spun my Hunger Games Clove x Cato fic into a Gendry x Arya fic. SO if you've read "A Monster's Prize & A Victor's Mask", there will not be many differences up until like chapter 4, before I diverge. If you are waiting for Chapter 3, I'm so sorry, it's been on my computer for over a month, I just had another two plot bunnies (One Hunger Games and one A Song of Ice and Fire) that ran away with me, and I can't post Chapter 3 until I finish Chapter 4 because their timelines are connected (which makes no sense now but you will totally understand when you read it LOL)_ **

* * *

PRETTY PLEASE  **REVIEW**  IT GIVES ME FLUFFY FEELINGS : )

(and pushes me to write more chapters, of course ;) )


	2. how to breed monsters

**_Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns Great Games, George R. R. Martin owns A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones, and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*_ **

* * *

**_Summary:_ **

**_The Great Games: a grand tourney where each district allows up to one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some Districts have extra incentives. (OR: the one where Gendry wins, and it looks like Arya is his prize)_ **

**_Reminder: We're in a pseudo-Great Games verse in terms of technology. No Capitol, just 13 Districts who take turns hosting an annual inter-district competition that gives the Victor fame and fortune._ **

* * *

**_Story so far:_ **

**_Gendry Lannister's mother, Cersei, is annoyed that her son's friends (including Ramsay Bolton and Ned Dayne) have delivered Gendry's prize to her doorstep. The prize is a girl, one who has been a part of Gendry's (and thus Cersei's) life for longer than she'd like to admit._ **

* * *

**The Great Games**

* * *

**Chapter 2:**

_how to breed monsters_

* * *

_"_ _You are an honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes I forget that. I have met so few of them in my life ... When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I understand why."_

_~ Lord Varys_

* * *

Cersei Lannister had been blessed with beauty, or so she'd been told. She'd been blessed with brains too, but was smart enough to only let people see her smiles. She grew up in luxury, lavished with attention in one of the sprawling manors comprising the Victor's Village in District 2. Her father had been the well-loved champion of the 30th Great Games, continuing the legacy of his father and grandfather before him. The Great Games (an inter-district competition where the strongest warriors represented their home Districts and competed for glory) was synonymous with the Lannister name. No, that was wrong,  _Victor_  was synonymous with the Lannister name.

Cersei is gorgeous, with the renowned Lannister thick golden curls and striking emerald eyes. She is rich, through birth and through marriage. But, more than her beauty and her bank account, she is  _smart._ She is intelligent in a dangerous, manipulating kind of way. Only her father knows this, and he allows it solely because she is as obedient to him as her mother was. Actually, no, that isn't entirely true. One other person knew she was capable of independent thought, and that was Cersei's only friend (unlike the other sheep whose daily bleating that she endured). Lysa was her name, Dr. Lysa Tully. Lysa was a few years her senior, and she was smart too. At only age 21, Lysa became the youngest physician to ever be registered in District 2.

At age 21, Cersei became a widow.

* * *

**+-{+}-+**

* * *

18-year-old Cersei is unsurprised when her father summons her to his solar, and formally commands her to seduce 28-year-old Robert Baratheon, the Victor of the 52nd Great Games, into sliding a ring onto her finger. She does not put up a fuss, despite their age gap and his origins, because she paid close attention to this year's Games. She easily inferred from how he handled his tasks that Robert is mostly brawn, negligible brain, and entirely malleable. Lysa on the other hand, does not understand Tywin Lannister's instructions at first, and is very vocal about it; the fact that District 2 West's princess is being given to an unpopular Victor. Unpopular in the West (the part of District 2 that actually mattered), because even though Robert is a Victor, he is from District 2  _East_.

District 2 West has a longstanding hierarchy built on names and tradition, and Robert is nothing but a single child from a deceased single mother from the lower middle class of District 2 East. In Lysa's repeatedly voiced opinion, Robert is a nobody who likely fancies himself one of the elite now that he is the first non-West Victor from District 2. And so, Lysa doesn't understand why Cersei's well-respected, well-bred father would even consider sullying his daughter and his line with the likes of Robert, who she considers to be only a marginally better option for a spouse than the grubby peasants and putrid urchins from the slums of District 2 South.

Cersei knows her father's mind all too well, and figures that there is a greater purpose to his selection of Robert. Normally she would work it out, but she needs to invest her mental energy towards the manipulations and scheming that will be required in snaring the doe-eyed fool. Cersei's father raised her to be obedient without question, so honestly, it would not matter even if he had no ulterior purpose to his instruction.

She owes him a debt, and thus her unfaltering obedience is expected, even though her loyalty alone will never be enough to repay him.

* * *

Tywin Lannister wins the 30th Great Games and then marries a girl with impeccable breeding and a good, old name from 2 West.

Unfortunately, Cersei's mother was unable to conceive Tywin a son. Only stillborn after stillborn, miscarriage after miscarriage, and a girl.

Tywin was the only child of a line of male Victors. So, by the etiquette of 2 West, Tywin had every reason to abandon his wife and daughter, and wed another more fertile bride instead. Because his family's legacy demanded a son, no one who mattered would fault him for abandoning a barren wife.

Tywin did not.

And so Cersei feels she owes her obedience to her father, a man who stayed true to her mother, even when the woman could not bear him a Victor - could not bear a son for him to mold. Tywin may be a cold, unfeeling man, but he is also a man who did not disown her, an action which would have left her with no more to her name that the rats of Southside. (It is a horrifying thought, one that she keeps away from her, for fear of ruminating over the fate she could have had).

Of course, she understands it was not love that kept Tywin Lannister true to his wife.

Tywin's marriage to her mother had always been political – her mother's family had many positioned in the District 2 Council, and had spawned over three Mayors (including Cersei's great grandfather). Moreover, his loyalty to a barren woman incapable of giving him a son to continue his legacy further endeared him to all of the District 2 populace, regardless of region. Wasn't Tywin Lannister  _kind_. Wasn't Tywin Lannister  _noble_. Wasn't Tywin Lannister just  _magnanimous_.

When Cersei is eight years old, her mother dies in in childbirth, moments after the woman had delivered yet another stillborn babe.

Cersei initially suspects it was not the accident her father so convincingly mourned over, but Lysa had been an apprentice at the time, and told her that her mother's passing was natural. "Stress on her body from another failed birth," according to Lysa.

* * *

It doesn't take Cersei nor Lysa long to realize the advantages of marrying Robert Baratheon from the East when the next election announces that all citizen's votes will count as a whole vote, unlike before where any non-West District 2 citizen only had a partial vote.

Tywin Lannister, who is not only a Victor and bred in the East, but the grandson-in-law of a previous mayor, and father-in-law to the only ever non-West Victor, wins the election by a landslide.

* * *

Robert is tall with straight ink-black hair, a smith's broad shoulders leading to strong arms, and topped off with beautiful dark blue eyes.  _At least he is handsome,_  she thinks, as she orchestrates some happenstance meetings, uses her voice and her beauty to lure him into conversation and kisses, and forces a light sheen of happy tears into her eyes when he proposes to her.

* * *

Cersei is almost disbelieving of the sheer gullibility of her besotted fool of a husband. Robert is naïve. He is overly trusting. He tells awful jokes that she forces herself to laugh at. He is always chasing her about asking if he can do anything else for her. He shortens her name to a nickname that she only lets Lysa call her. He accommodates her request to keep her maiden name. He is from East. He is from a no-name family, and he grew up not knowing wealth.

But he is  _kind_.

* * *

Cersei, at 19 years of age, locks herself in one of the many bathrooms of her husband's manor.

Her stomach cramps uncontrollably. She has tears running down her face and blood running down between her legs, the red a burning contrast to her ivory thighs. She collapses onto the floor, and the stark cold of the marble sticks to her sweat-drenched palms.

Cersei is only  _19 years old_  and she is losing her first child.

Her thoughts are racing with everything she needs to do; with everything she should be doing instead of hiding in this godforsaken bathroom. She needs to call Lysa. She needs to cover this up somehow. She needs to make sure her father never hears of this. (What will he do to her, if he suspects her womb is just as inhospitable as her mother's was? What Tywin Lannister he do to her, if he even begins to suspect that she is incapable of continuing his legacy?)

Her stomach twists, and she throws her face over the toilet before puking.

Oh god, what will her  _husband_ do to her?

Robert has never raised a hand to her before, never even raised his  _voice_ to her before. But that was before she lost his child. He is still as strong as the day he won his Games, he could easily beat her to within a breath of her life, then drag her into his bed and plow into her until another child fills her womb to make up for the one who is currently bleeding out of her.

Cersei starts shaking uncontrollably. She does not want to die on this icy floor in a house that isn't hers. She does not want to be beaten by a homicidal husband. She just wants a son to give to her father - a son to pay her debt so that she can finally be free of her father's tyranny.

She feels thick arms come around her shoulders, and she wonders if her  _naïve, besotted, overly trusting fool of a husband_ will strangle her. (He isn't stupid enough to not know what the blood on the floor means.  _'Oh god, oh god, I'm going to die here.'_ )

Only Robert doesn't strangle her. Instead he pulls her to him, holds her close but not too tight, not with the grip an angry man should have.

"We'll be okay Ceri. We'll get through this. Shhh, it will all be okay."

His words aren't sarcastic. They aren't bitter or tinged with threat. They are  _kind_.

She immediately turns in his hold, then buries her face into the crook of his neck, and clutches the fabric over his chest as she sobs. And sobs. And sobs. And while she continues to sob, Robert continues to whisper comforting things in a soothing voice.

Then he begins to get up, taking her with him.

In that moment Cersei feels like such a fool. He tricked her, she knows, and she expects to be hauled into his bed, forced into giving him an heir on a bed soaked with the blood of her dying child. Or perhaps he would rather yank her towards the nearest window. After all, the stage is already half-set for a grieving woman taking her life after an unfortunate miscarriage.

Instead she is slowly carried into a large porcelain tub, where Robert takes a soft wet towel and gently washes away the blood, the tears, and the sweat off of her. And when he seems sure that she is bleeding no more, he gently lifts her once more. He lays her carefully on their bed, and he does nothing more than hold her as she drifts off to sleep.

* * *

He is kind.

Robert stays kind, even when she loses two others.

She asks him, once, why he stays with her. (For all her and Lysa' s blustering about his breeding, Victor's have overflowing pocket books that attract any woman easily.)

He looks baffled at her question, then almost offended, but finally understanding when he replies. "Oh Ceri. I married you because I love you, not for an heir. If we are lucky enough to have a child, then I'll be overjoyed. And if we never can, I will still be overjoyed because I will get to spend the rest of my life with you."

 _'Fool.'_ She thinks, eyes wet from his honesty, her heart becoming just another bit softer towards the man she married.

* * *

"You don't drink." She notes one day. She honestly hadn't paid attention before.

Robert snorts. "Hate the stuff." He frowns. "My father was a drunkard, got himself killed in the mines because he was wasted when he went to work. Left my mom and me with nothing." His eyes change the moment he mentions his mother. "She was good though, the best. The kindest person who ever lived. Until you, she was the only person that I had ever loved."

"What was her name?" She asks.

"Genria" He says with a nostalgic smile.

Ceri wonders then what it would be like to kiss him honestly. No mask, no debt. Just a wife who cared for her husband.

* * *

When Ceri is 8 months pregnant, the furthest she has ever been, she does not pray for a son to give her father. She does not pray for a son to buy her freedom.

Instead she prays for a daughter to give her husband. A girl with his kind eyes and his honest smile. She prays for a daughter that they can raise together.

* * *

She is drenched in sweat when she first hears the cries of her child.

"It's a boy!" Lysa exclaims from the foot of the bed, as she and her nurses go about dealing with the child and the afterbirth.

From Ceri's side, she hears the familiar smooth baritone of her husband. "You'll be such a great mother." Robert says, with a calming voice as he brushes the bangs plastered over her eyes, and gently kisses her sweat-stained forehead. His hand is still clasped in hers, where it has steadily stayed for every second of the past hours of painful labour. She looks into his cobalt eyes, that are so deep and so happy and so warm and so thankful and so  _loving._ "What would you like to name him?" He asks her. (They hadn't talked about names at her request, her being too terrified to name a child she was liable to lose.)

She has no doubt Tywin is expecting that his grandson - the heir to the Lannister legacy - be named after him. Perhaps Tyrion, or Tytos, or Tybalt. But she does not want her son to be her father. She does not want her son to be a Victor or a debt payment. In that moment, she wants her son to be kind and to be honest.

She looks directly into her husband's eyes when she names their son after the woman who raised him.

* * *

When Gendry Baratheon-Lannister spends his first night at home, it is in a golden crib. Ceri watches over him as he breathes his small breaths, his little fingers curled into soft fists. She feels safe, encased in Robert's strong arms as they both stand faithfully by the crib until dawn.

She decides she wouldn't mind staying like this, in this moment, for the rest of her life.

* * *

Robert is naïve, overly trusting, ill-bred.

Robert will make her son weak.

Or at least, that is what Tywin warns, when she is once more summoned to his solar (in the house where she grew up, but not the home she now has with her husband and son in another plot of Victor's Village). Tywin, with the same unflinching tone as before, informs Ceri that Robert needs to be disposed of.

She panics. She cannot disobey her father, but she cannot bring herself to harm her husband, to rob Gendry of his father. Robert is kind, the only infallible kindness she has ever known, and  _he does not deserve to die._

She thinks quickly.

"I have an heir, so I'll remove him if that's what you wish," she lies. "But perhaps I should secure a spare first?"

She watches her father consider the reasoning, her breath bated. She tries to keep her expression placid, while she tries to think of another way to buy her husband time in case her father rejects this one.

"A spare," Tywin nods, "not necessary, but not invaluable if you can birth another boy. Provide a spare and then get rid of your husband."

"Yes, father" she says, while debating if she cares enough for Robert to run away with him. (Tywin would hunt them until the ends of the earth, but perhaps if she left Gendry she could keep Robert?)

* * *

Ceri grew up with servants and staff at her beck and call, so it is a novel experience for her to have so few. Robert hires a cook and a cleaner, who do their duties every morning and then allow the small family privacy for the rest of the day. During Gendry's early months, it was her and her husband who woke up to see to his needs. They were raising him together, as a family. And Ceri finds she likes it - having a  _home_.

* * *

Any time that Robert is not catering to her or playing with their son, Robert spends by volunteering as a trainer for future Great Game tributes. There is a 48-hour long exposition today at the Training Centre. Some of Robert's favourite students are competing. He promised them he would attend. However, Ceri is 8 months along in her second promising pregnancy and Gendry is just over a year old.

Pregnant women and infants are not allowed in the Training Centres.

"I swear to you, the minute you call for me, I will be back by your side." He promises.

And she believes him, because Robert never lies to her.

He jokingly says he can bring Gendry along with him, to give her and Lysa a girl's night, as he tickles the infant's stomach. Baby Gendry is lying supine on a fluffy blanket, squealing in delight and clapping at his father, who bends down to blow a raspberry onto his son's stomach. "Dah!" Gendry sings. "Gendry!" Robert sings back. Ceri can't hold back her smile as she looks upon the antics of her two silly boys.

"How about you stay with Mommy and Aunt Lysa, and your future little sibling? Would you like that better, Gendry?" She coos at her son while playfully nudging her husband out of the way and ticking the boy's feet. Gendry just squeals again in delight, smiling even wider. "Mah! Mah! Mah!"

"Such a Mamma's boy," Her husband accuses impishly, while sighing and rolling his eyes good-naturedly. He lifts Gendry up to the sky, and spins him round and round. Ceri laughs freely at Gendry's glee and uninhibited wonder. "Dah! Fy!" Her son yelps with joy. "Fy! Fy! Fy!"

The perfect moment is broken when they hear a knock at the closest door. Robert tries to set his son down, but Gendry petulantly clings to his father's legs. Her son's adorable pouting just serves to widen Ceri's smile and she gently disentangles the boy's grip from Robert's training pants. Her husband thanks her with a wide smile. His arms are warm as he envelops her in a strong hug before giving her a kiss that takes her breath away. He rubs his hand over her protruding stomach, smiles even wider when he feels a kick. He reminds her again that he is just a call away if he is needed, before going to answer the persistent knocking.

Robert leaves for the exposition, Lysa enters, and Ceri continues smiling at her goofball of a son. She raises an amused brow when her son starts demanding his pregnant mother let him "fy" the way his father does. For a second she thinks he is trying to mirror the expression, and the sight of his endearing consternation makes her heart swell.

Lysa picks up Gendry and takes him upstairs to get him ready for some playtime outdoors. "Once this little rascal is set to go outside, I'll make us some tea Ceri!" Lysa exclaims over her shoulder as she starts up the stairs.

Ceri's smile falls the moment Lysa is on the upper floor. Ceri doesn't think she is capable of leaving Gendry anymore, and is completely sure that Robert will refuse to abandon his son. However, as she is constantly reminded by her growing stomach, she is running out of time to figure out a way to save her husband from her father.

* * *

Ceri makes it to the birthing bed again, but this time a month too early and without Robert by her side.

She screams for him, begs Lysa to call her husband from his stupid exposition, because something feels  _wrong_ this time and she  _needs_ him. She needs him here, holding her hand and telling her it will be all right because this time she is growing increasing frightened with each hour that passes; she is scared that she will die in a bed of blood the same way her mother did.

She hasn't seen her husband since they shared breakfast this morning, before he left for the exposition. She had entered labour ten hours ago, with Lysa as the sole witness.

_'Where are you?!'_

She is terrified, not just for this child who refuses to come out, but also for a husband who is too kind, too understanding of her fears, to have ever willingly left her to this alone if he'd had another choice. She knows in her gut her father must have not wanted to wait any longer. Again, a contraction yields pain without progression, and Ceri knows for certain that her husband must be dead, and she will soon follow.

She thinks of Gendry, her sweet little boy who still clings to her skirts, her darling son who shrieks with laughter every time he tries to escape a bath.

Another contraction rips through her and she screams.

She is dying. And Gendry will be an orphan, left in the severe hands of her ambitious father.

* * *

Ceri is drenched in sweat, but there are no cries of a child this time.

"Stillborn." Lysa says, with more pity than kindness.

* * *

When she finally sees Robert again, a few hours later, he is spewing apologies and excuses.

(An exposition structure had collapsed. He helped extract the younger students who were stuck underneath, close to dying. No one had told him. No one had called him or else he would have been right by her side. Etcetera, etcetera.)

The truth is that even if  _he_  had been the one that was dying, he should have crawled through the damned streets to be there for her. He should have  _known._ He should have been there holding her when she sobbed after giving birth to a corpse.

Robert is kind, kind enough to help others instead of protecting her.

Robert is kind, but Robert wasn't there.

Robert has made her dependent on him.

_Robert has made her weak._

Cersei will never forgive him for it.

* * *

Robert collapses in the middle of the Training Centre, urged to go help rebuild one of their structures by his wife only three days after news of his stillborn daughter. Cersei sells her part as the grieving widow well.

Lysa does the autopsy, so on paper it says that Robert died of heart stress. (Of course that's not entirely false, but not entirely true either. Lysa is loyal enough to keep the relevant tidbits out of the report.)

"Good riddance," Lysa exclaims as the duo share a bottle of champagne after Robert's funeral. "A shame that Gendry has to share blood with the ill-bred fool, but soon no one will remember that." Cersei takes a large gulp, draining the flute of liquor as Lysa continues her tirade. "At least Gendry won't have to suffer the fool as he grows…"

Lysa' s words fade as Cersei remembers the way Robert would playfully spin her son in his arms. She refills her glass. Gendry still asks for his  _Dah_ ; the stupid brat doesn't realize he no longer has a father. To be frank, she doubts he has much of a mother anymore either. Gendry is an orphan in all the ways that matter now.

"... right, Ceri?"

Cersei looks down at her glass, which is empty again. She reaches for the bottle when she responds. "Don't call me that anymore."

* * *

Even if Robert's death was in any way suspicious, which it very much is (a man in peak health dying from heart issues, a widow granted full control over all of her deceased husband's Victor Funds); no one would dare whisper a word against the daughter of District 2's Mayor. And honestly, the people who matter, the people from the West, well they don't spare a second glance at a dead man from 2 East.

Likewise, no one says anything when the hyphenated last name of her son is shortened to reflect only her family's name.

The last of Robert's stain on her son is gone.

(She drinks herself to the point of blacking out on the day her father tells her to erase Gendry's last tether to his father.)

* * *

Gendry Lannister is trained by Tywin Lannister mercilessly.

Gendry starts walking at two years old, and is holding weapons before three.

Cersei supposes she should help the boy, that she should care enough to spare him from the brutal upbringing Tywin was never able to give to a son of his own. But, she knows that giving Gendry to Tywin has finally fulfilled her debt to the man.

**Gendry isn't really her son anymore anyways. He's the son her mother never gave her father.**

(Even more,  _Gendry is the reason Robert is dead_. If she had just been able to leave the little leech, she and Robert could have run away together. She and Robert and their daughter could have lived happily together far away from here while Tywin fawned over his heir in District 2. And if Gendry had just been a girl or even stillborn, she could have at least had Robert for longer. She would have had time to forgive him, to talk herself out of her anger, to not  _poison_  the only honest kindness she had ever known.)

Cersei has a large wine cellar installed in the basement of the manor. She is the only occupant now. Gendry has a few rooms for show, but as the boy grows he spends more and more nights with his grandfather. Cersei spends her time drinking instead of eating, shopping with her dead husband's money, hiring staff to cook for Gendry when he deigns to stay with her, and being waited on by servants who she hires to maintain the house.

(It is a house now, it will never be a home again).

* * *

Cersei cannot bring herself to love her son, who continues to stray further away from her and grow further away from the person his father would have wanted him to be.

Gendry is the reason Robert is dead. And yet, Gendry is the only piece of her husband that she has left. The latter fact was what made her remove the pillow from its position over a sleeping two-year-old Gendry's face, when she had almost attempted to suffocate him. Not even Lysa knew about that. Or about the other four times she almost suffocated her son when he was a toddler, only to be stopped only by the ghost of her husband.

Gendry has straight black hair and cobalt eyes.

She hates his existence, and yet eagerly awaits for him to grow into his father's face. Her inner conflict is maddening, so she resolves to pursue with indifference. There are no more attempts at suffocation. But there are no more smiles and cooing either.

She still talks to the boy, of course. Though it is easy to see that as the boy grows older, he never quite cares enough about her to love her back. Perhaps he is smart enough to know that she disposed of his father, she suspects he hides his brains like she does.

(Or perhaps he just remembers the feeling of a pillow pressed over his mouth, and choking on air that almost wasn't there.)

* * *

They are a broken pair. Gendry has a grandfather and his sword, while Cersei has a ghost and her wine.

* * *

**End of Chapter 2**

* * *

_"_ _There are no heroes...in life, the monsters win."_

_~ Sansa Stark, Game of Thrones_

* * *

**Review pretty please :) Did anyone catch the hint with Lysa' s name? What do you think of Cersei and Robert now that you have some more AU backstory? Did you catch why/when I did the whole Ceri and Cersei thing? Poor Robert. A part of me wanted him to live after I wrote this chapter, but that would totally destroy what I have planned for Gendry and Arya in the future. Speaking of, next chapter will have LOTS of Gendry and Arya! What do think of the writing, grammar, plot pace, dialogue, etc? Constructive criticism and feedback very much welcome!**

* * *

**Preview of Chapter 3: how to feed an addiction**

"There are plenty of ways to break little girls, Gendry. Explore your options."

...

(she bred a monster, she isn't surprised)

...

Tywin laments over the creature in front of him... and wonders how much of his grandson's cruelty was born from his own relentless training of the boy, versus how much was due to his daughter's indifference. It is cruelty that is unmatched; he remembers every detail of the gory report given by ... of what the boy was capable of at just 15 years old (of what he did to the girl he now wants to own).

...

And we finally see some Gendry and Arya!

* * *

 **AN: Sorry for the preview confusion, I was initially going to have chapter 2 and 3 as one chapter, but the whole Cersei and Robert storyline ran away from me ;P** **_This chapter was essentially me delving into Gendry's early years, and an opportunity to begin explaining the convoluted relationship he has with his family, especially Cersei. It's essentially the backbone for a lot of his issues later on, and part of the reason his relationship with Arya is so messed up (a relationship which I promise you will learn more of in Chapter 3 ;) )_ **

* * *

REVIEW PLEASE !!


	3. how to feed an addiction

**_Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns Great Games, George R. R. Martin owns A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones, and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*_ **

* * *

**_Summary:_ **

_The Great Games: a grand tourney where each district allows up to one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some Districts have extra incentives. (OR: the one where Gendry wins, and it looks like Arya is his prize)_

_Reminder: We're in a pseudo-Great Games verse in terms of technology. No Capitol, just 13 Districts who take turns hosting an annual inter-district competition that gives the Victor fame and fortune._

* * *

**_Story so far:_ **

_Story so far:_ _Gendry Lannister's mother, Cersei,_ _is annoyed that her son's friends (including Ramsay and Ned) have delivered Gendry's "prize" to her doorstep. The prize is a girl, one who has been a part of Gendry's (and thus Cersei's) life for far longer than she'd like to admit. In the last chapter, we learned a bit more about Gendry's biological father (Robert, the first non-West Victor), Gendry's maternal grandfather (Tywin, a Victor himself descending from a long line of Victors), Dr. Lysa Tully (Cersei's best friend, also from the East, she is the youngest District 2 citizen to be registered as a physician), and the divisions of District 2 (East = posh, traditionalist, wealthy; West = lower/middle working class; South = the "slums"; North = mountains that are mined). Specifically, we learn that Tywin has a chip on his shoulder regarding needing a male heir to further his family's long line of Victors, and expects Cersei to deliver him the heir by seducing Robert. Cersei marries Robert, but unexpectedly begins to care for her husband (to the point where she considers disobeying her father when he instructed her to dispose of Robert). Cersei considers running away with Robert and her next child, and abandoning Gendry to Tywin so that her father does not hunt the trio down. But, tragedy strikes, and Robert (from Cersei's perspective) was not there for her when she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. In retribution, she ultimately follows through with her father's orders to dispose of Robert. Lysa covers for her by doing the autopsy report. Cersei has complicated feelings towards Gendry:_

_-guilt of robbing him of his father and handing him to her own merciless father_

_-blaming Gendry for his father's death_

_\- loving that Gendry has all his father's feature but hating that Gendry has none of his father's personality traits (honesty, kindness, etc.)_

_-and longing for the family she once had but destroyed._

_-etc. etc._

_Her mechanism of dealing is a penchant for fermented drinks and treating Gendry with indifference (leaving most of Gendry's upbringing to her high-expectations, little-affection father)._

**Response to Reviewers** and **Preview of Chapter 4 at the end of the chapter!**

* * *

**The Great Games**

* * *

**Chapter 3:**

_how to feed an addiction_

* * *

_"_ _You're speaking of murdering a child."_

_~ Eddard Stark_

* * *

**IMPORTANT :**

_Gendrya fans, please do not give up on the story after reading this chapter. The _ _**next** _ _chapter will clear up many things. I'll try not to spoil, but remember these first three chapters are from Cersei's point of view, and is thus_ _her_ _understanding of events._

* * *

Cersei doesn't flinch when the searing heat of tea creeps over her tongue.

She is so extraordinarily, unfathomably, inconceivably…  _bored._

Yesterday, she was invited (commanded) to have dinner with her father and her ten-year-old spawn at Tywin Lannister's manor. So today she sits at a familiar mahogany table that is studded with pyrite, zealously awaiting her departure.

Gendry and her father blather on and on – a positively  _riveting_ conversation - regarding the technicalities of swordplay and spear throwing. There are some throwaway comments about the most vulnerable arteries versus the messiest arteries to tear. And then there is some casual mention of the most effective locations on the neck to aim for when stabbing future tributes.

The discussion is so utterly trite and dull that Cersei considers stabbing her _own_ neck with a fork just to escape it.

There is a lull in the table's conversation, and silence joins the trio. In the background, the staff flit about silently, trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible as they anticipate and respond to their patrons' needs. One of the staff appears by her side and pours some steaming liquid into Cersei's porcelain cup.

The swirls of white wafting out of the cup allows Cersei to recognize that the amber liquid being poured is, again, not the one she craves.  _'Tea. How useless.'_  Despite her mental scorn, and her increasing desire to leave this ugly table and the foul company, she keeps her face pleasantly placid.

Her well-postured shoulders stiffen when she feels the heavy gaze of her father. She greets his eyes with her own gaze reflexively, but regrets it. Unfortunately, she easily discerns from the slight arch in his brow that he wishes (demands) her to engage the brat that sits across from her. She would rather not converse with the urchin, but she'd rather not incite her father's anger more.

She looks at the boy, and feels a vicious, twisted pleasure that he looks nothing like a Lannister. No blond hair nor emerald eyes. No ivory skin coating a lean physique with wiry muscle. Gendry is easily bronzed skin, black strands, blue eyes, and budding bulk.

_'A Baratheon through and through. We took your name, but not your face.'_

Cersei sees none of herself in this boy that tore out of her. No, all she sees when she gazes upon the brat is the image of the man he killed (with perhaps the faintest echo of her dead mother, who was topped with silky raven locks as well).

"Gendry,  _sweetling_ , how was your day?" She enquires politely as the staff decants  _more fucking tea_. She hides her irritation at the contents of her cup by staring coolly at her son. There are stronger, better things that she should be consuming ( _things that make her pleasantly numb, things that make her forget_ ), but they are currently withheld by the interference of her hawk of a father.

' _The great Tywin Lannister. Long may he reign.'_

She considers it a bone fide miracle that her thick sarcasm does not shove her treasonous thoughts through her teeth. (' _And that my bitterness does not shove a fork in my father's neck. I can see his carotids pulsing, and wouldn't that be the most brilliant red there ever was? Vivid and carmine, his life dancing down his neck with every beat and varnishing the mahogany…'_ )

Gendry's eyes widen in response to her question, affecting shock that she would address him. Cersei mentally rolls her eyes. The child oscillates between ignoring her, hating her, and acting starved for her attention. ' _How pathetic. Your father was never so fickle, never so desperate. He was strong in a way you will never be.'_

The inky-haired boy, however, is uncharacteristically hesitant to respond to her easy question. And Tywin notices. Unsurprising, since the man has trained Gendry from the cradle to never show something so weak as hesitation.

The brat's apparent uncertainty is mirrored in his abnormally quiet words. "There… was a new girl in the Training Centre today. In my old bracket."

"And?" Cersei encourages, swirling the contents of her cup. She is bored out of her mind. She can't have more alcohol than her single glass of wine from earlier since her father is so near. Once the desperate little Lannister heir answers her question sufficiently enough to please her father, then she can finally retreat to her house ( _and her cellar and her ghost and her not-tea beverages and her empty house and her numbness and her_  –)

"She was… kind of… okay." Gendry admits, begrudgingly while staring resolutely at his plate. His brow furrows, as if his words pain him.

Cersei immediately pauses the churning of her cup. Now she is  _interested._

Cersei has never heard the boy utter anything other than deluges of haughty superiority when referring to his fellow trainees and their skills. For him, 'okay' was tantamount to high praise.

_'Honestly, this 'okay' is the only almost-compliment by him of another human being that I have ever heard.'_

"At combat training, she beat Ramsay." The words seem to flow easier from him now that he can see his words have earned Cersei's attention.

_'Pitiful and pathetic, your father was never so obviously eager to please.'_

"He called her a gutter rat and a Southside slut. Yelled at her to go back to her whorehouse and service her customers before they followed her up to the East and dirtied up our streets. She didn't yell back; she challenged him to a duel." Gendry's eyes are glowing now, recalling the 'fierce battle', and it is with a slight awe that he announces: "She  _beat_ him."

Gendry continues recounting the affair, more animated now (and clearly oblivious to Tywin's increasingly tense posture). "She was barely half his size! But she flipped her legs over his neck, locked them perfectly, and flipped him onto his back. He couldn't even breathe, and she wasn't going to stop."

Gendry seems to admire this girl's ruthlessness, and Cersei is unsurprised.

_'You're a horrid creature that leeched away any happiness that I could have had. You were the death of my dreams.'_

"The trainers had to come and pull her off. Then she told Ramsay – loudly enough so that all of the trainees and even trainers could hear – that if he ever called her that again, she would break his neck, and no trainer would be able to save him." Gendry seems to further esteem the homicidal intent from the Southside rat, and Cersei really wishes she had something other than  _fucking tea_  to handle that.

Cersei is well-practiced in politics (Tywin taught young Gendry how to fight battles, but Tywin taught young Cersei how to fake interest). So, she doesn't let her eyes widen even though they itch to from her disbelief. This shock does not stem from the boy's clear veneration of the girl's homicidal intent. And it is not baited from the ease with which 10-year-old Gendry lets out slurs. Instead, her disbelief is rooted in the feat that her son has just described. Ramsay had been ranked second in her son's previous bracket in Level 2. When Gendry was promoted to a bracket in Level 3, Ramsay had been moved up the ranking to first…

The deep, serious timber of her father interupts her thoughts. "Unlike your foolish old acquaintance, I trust that you will not let this girl steal your rank from you?" Tywin warns. Cersei knows that the so-called  _acquaintance_  had been the closest thing young Gendry had to a best friend ( _'Well, the Bolton boy and the Dayne boy in equal measure, I suppose. From what he says.'_ ). That is, until her father told him winners didn't have friends, that anything other than allies and acquaintances was a distraction. _'Lannisters don't entertain distractions.'_

"Of course not!" Gendry reels back in his upholstered chair, affronted at the idea of the new girl beating him. Then he stares into his plate once more, looking for all the world like he actually has something worthwhile to contemplate in his head ( _'doubtful'_ , Cersei thinks maliciously).

"It's not like she can even challenge me…" Gendry hedges, moving his gaze to the far corner of the room, petulant. "…she's still in Level 2."

Cersei is quick to hold her tea up from the table. (She may not like the insipid stuff, but until she gets back to her cellar, this cup of bitterly bland steam is literally all she has to help her endure this dinner).

She lifts the cup just in time, right before Tywin slams Gendry's head into the table.

**Swish.**

**Thud.**

**Clang.**

Tywin's voice is glacial, hissing towards Gendry loudly enough for Cersei to hear. "Trainees who best the first ranked in their bracket on their first day don't stay in Level 2 for long.  _You will not let her take your rank from you._  Am I understood?"

"Yes, Grandfather." The boy is smart enough to respond without hesitation, his voice as even paced as Cersei imagines any soldier's might be. When Tywin removes his hand from the back of the child's head, the boy is even smarter still to keep his face down. His cheek stays plastered to a half-eaten plate of steak, whipped potatoes, and boiled vegetables.

A stilted pause, as no one says a word. And then-

"Lift your head," instructs Tywin.

Gendry follows Tywin's words promptly, but does not dare wipe his face. He lets the thick sauce and chunks of starch slowly detach off his cheek and clunk into the remains of his dinner.

 _'Looks like the china survived.'_  Cersei notes dryly.

Her ambivalent gaze traces the delicate silver filigree, hand-painted onto the edges of the plate now freed from Gendry's face.

She sees Tywin signal for his staff to clean up the mess. They scramble over each other to do so, like ants, unwilling to have her father's ire transferred onto them. When Cersei's eyes meet young, hauntingly familiar cobalt eyes, there is something… beseeching… in them.

( _Help me. Please... You're my_ mom _._ )

This time, it is a loud silence that stretches between them.

"Well this has been a lovely dinner. I'll be returning to my manor now. Have a pleasant evening, father, Gendry."

She nods to them both, then takes the teacup - a macabre souvenir - to celebrate her departure.

_'You may have your father's eyes, but that will not sway me. It makes me sick that a beast like you can breathe when Robert does not. I wish on you my suffering, tenfold.'_

* * *

Many years later, Cersei will still have the teacup. She will look upon the memento more than once, eyes following the delicate silvery swirls along its edge, and each time she gazes upon the porcelain she will contemplate.

She will remember Gendry's vitality as the monstrous little boy introduced a violent little girl.

She will remember the dead look in Gendry's eyes when she left the dinner table, without him.

She will also remember that dinner for the pivotal moment it was: the instant Gendry stopped believing his mother cared enough to save him (when he began to suspect that maybe she didn't care at all).

* * *

Cersei soon learns the name of the violent little girl…

_Arya._

* * *

Three years after the infamous dinner, Cersei is sitting on the porch of her manor's West Wing. She would be perfectly content lounging about with her double-aged wine purchased from the vineyards of District 7, but for one blight on her mood. Tywin is at a Council meeting, and so the terror she sired is having dinner across from her.

The meal is quiet, which Cersei is normally content with, but her curiosity outplays her desire to disengage from the boy.

"Is she pretty?" Cersei finds herself asking.

"Of course not." Gendry reflexively scoffs. Unfortunately for Gendry, he is betrayed by crimson flush blooming on his cheeks and the way his cerulean eyes fixate resolutely on the patio table.

Cersei almost rolls her own emerald orbs. She wonders if the foolish boy realizes how much he has just given away by not asking to confirm just who Cersei's question had been referring to.

She finds it more than a bit troubling that the little Southside urchin is  _still_ able to occupy the thoughts of the boy. Gendry Lannister, Tywin's heir, the Lannister Legacy: a boy who had previously thought of nothing bar being the youngest Games champion in history. Her father does not complain of his progress in training though, so she supposes it doesn't matter who or what occupies Gendry's thoughts. No doubt, her father just assumes that Gendry will eventually grow bored of the girl - that the girl's novelty will wear off. Perhaps Gendry does a better job of hiding his little obsession from Tywin? Or perhaps Tywin assumes that when they are older, Gendry can just fuck the girl out his system. Cersei doesn't doubt that her father would pay the girl handsomely if she were stubborn about Gendry's advances. And if the girl refused payment (which Cersei doubts, as Southside rats care more for money than dignity), well, her father could be... creative.

 _'Lannisters are good at being creative. Lannisters are the best at getting what they want.'_ She thinks, and in that moment she relives the moment she drizzled poison into a cup.

She calls to the staff for another canter of wine.

( _'Poison quickly for my love, poison slowly for me. In delirium we meet.'_ )

* * *

In an attempt to sate her boredom, Cersei often takes trips to auctions in other districts. Or, at least, that is how she describes it to her overbearing father. In truth, she buys a pretty item from an auction and then she fills the rest of crate (that transports her purchased item) with bottles of varying types of luxury alcohol. The Mayor of District 2 keeps eyes on even the sales of liquor, the tyrannical menace, and has capped the District 2 vendor's sales of it to her.

This time, her travels take her to District 1's Ancient Art Auction.

District 1 is, as always,  _an_   _eye sore._ Too much glitter and pomp, whilst having too little alcohol content in their frilly saccharine drinks.

She wanders through the halls, pretending to seriously appraise the strokes of each canvas. In truth, she cares very little for these things, but Robert's gold sits idle, and if she cannot spend time with her husband then she can at least spend his gold.

She stops.

Before her is a triad. It piques her interest, which is surprising as very few things do.

The nearest auction worker notices this, sniffing the wealth emanating from her, and struts up to her side. Unprompted, the overdressed fool begins regaling her with the story of the three images in this collection.

"You've excellent taste, my lady, this is one of our most precious collections! In fact it…"

The first piece is a glowing image of a beautiful young girl, dancing in a meadow. She has rounded eyes set on an innocent face. A wreath of flowers adorns her long flowing curls, and the ringlet matches the blooms springing up along the greens of the meadow in the backdrop. There are detailed trees with thick branches, lined with wheat, painted along the edges of the canvas.

"…An ancient princess, from the lost civilization known as  _Greece…_ "

The second piece of the collection is split into two halves. The left half paints the same girl biting into a plump red fruit, red liquid dribbling down her chin and dripping onto a dark stone floor. The right half shows a dark figure wearing a crown, on a backdrop of gold, looming, waiting.

"… _Hades,_ King of the Underworld, who loved her the moment he saw her…."

The third piece of the collection shows the King dragging the princess into a dark void, right hand greedily ripping into her gown while the left keeps control of a chariot carted by black horses with ruby eyes. The dark creatures pull them towards a bed spun from gold. Cersei notes that the girl still looks pretty, even with the tears painted on her cheeks and the ruined wreath upon her head.  _'How unrealistic.'_ Cersei thinks. _'True tears are ugly.'_

"…This is only one interpretation of the myth, of course. There are others who say she bit the fruit willingly, eager to escape the overbearing presence of her domineering mother; do you see the confines of the wheat and trees? There are others who say that being a princess was insufficient; that she ambitioned to be a Queen. There are others still, who claim she had loved him all along, and–"

"How stupid," Cersei interrupts the loquacious worker. "No girl loves her cage. At best, she will fake a smile until she finds a key." (Cersei thinks of Gendry, her key. The key she'd had and how her younger self had been too sentimental to use him when doing so could have saved Robert.)

The auction worker seems unsure of how to respond to her realism, so Cersei ends the encounter. "The story was appreciated, but unnecessary. It  _is_  a lovely piece, and I will be sure to acquire it. Now, could you please direct me to the nearest winery?"

Cersei connects with her own version of this legend, a story she's heard before ( _lived_ before _)_ : a story of a momentary lapse and concession to a dark temptation. A rash choice that sealed a young girl's fate.

She goes back to District 2 with three crates, each painting lined with liquor.

* * *

When Gendry is sixteen years old, he storms into her manor, radiating rage as he screams and starts tearing apart the foyer of the East Wing.

Gendry, clearly livid, continues his tantrum even when she enters the area.

**Smash.**

Cersei momentarily mourns the loss of the now fragmented ceramic vase. It had been one of the pieces she liked best in the East Wing. It was a very expensive souvenir from an auction she attended two years ago in one of District 4's nouveau riche beach towns (it had been accompanied to her manor by a bundle of especially smooth bourbon).

Another vase, this time glass, sails across the room then shatters as it meets the framed art lining the opposite wall. _'Shame_ ,' she thinks as its translucent jagged pieces gouge the canvas, ' _I liked that painting too.'_

She decides to intervene before she loses any more of her favourite items. Like the  _very expensive_  District 11 oak carving that the human hurricane is getting closer to with each broken relic.

"And  _what_ ," she speaks, channelling her father too easily, "has brought this on?"

Gendry freezes, then slowly turns to face her. His eyes are widened, and Cersei deduces that the brat had been so consumed by his own rage (and destroying her lovely collection), that he had not even registered the audience to his madness.

He looks immediately to the ground, and scowls, unforthcoming with any response.

Cersei smirks and mockingly drawls. "And what has the  _pretty_  little Arya done now, that she could inspire  _such_  rage from  _such_  a cold little boy?"

He stiffens, likely embarrassed (by her persistent and repeated mocking of a confession he hadn't meant to make three years ago) and angry (over her demeaning address of him).

He is still fixated on the marble floors, seemingly chastised and petulant and infuriated all at once. When he finally responds, he pauses first to collect his thoughts. Cersei suspects that pause means he is holding something back, and she is about to prod, but then he speaks and her mind momentarily goes blank.

"She  _beat_  me _._ "

Cersei's jaw drops, first in shock… and then in fury. " _How_?" She seethes. "How could you lose to that Southside street rat? That grubby whore has probably spent more time on her back than in training, so how–"

" _Shut up_! Don't talk about her like that!" He screams back, now meeting her gaze angrily, bristling in unfounded indignation. He takes a breath. "It was just one round. She is good with knives. I beat her the other two times. So I still won the spar."

It is quiet between them, and then he has an apparent minute of lucidity in his blind rage "Grandfather… he… he isn't coming here tonight, is he?" Terror infuses her son's query.

Cersei is stone. "He won't hear of this from me. This area will be cleaned quietly and quickly the minute you leave." ( _'And you_ will _leave, I don't wish to deal with your appearance for any longer than absolutely necessary.'_ )

He raises his brow, clearly suspicious and disbelieving that she would willingly protect him in any manner.

Cersei internally rolls her eyes. "I do not wish to incur my father's wrath either." And they both know she will, that for this she most certainly will. Either directly or as spillover, she will bear part of the blame for Gendry's loss should Tywin learn of it. At her elaboration, Gendry seems more believing. After all, he might (rightfully) doubt her desire to protect him, but he wholly trusts Cersei's desire to protect herself.

"Do ensure that you do  _whatever_ needs to be done to prevent the girl from becoming a threat to your rank." Ranks were posted weekly, and there would be no hiding from Tywin should Gendry's name not be at the top. Cersei follows her words with a meaningful stare that he doesn't seem to comprehend.

Gendry stares blankly back at her, and she wonders if perhaps she has been overestimating his intelligence all these years. She turns to the shards on the floor, then looks up to one of the pieces that had just barely been spared by her timely intervention – the painting of Persephone being dragged into hell, gown torn, towards Hades' bed. She traces the golden border of the canvas as she speaks.

"There are plenty of ways to break pretty little girls, Gendry.  _Explore your options_."

She should probably feel at least a little nauseous after suggesting such an appalling thing, but she stopped feeling things like guilt when she poisoned Robert. ( _He always used to listen to her, even if he had nothing of substance to say. And he was kind to her, even if it was with his dopy lug-headed smile. And she had almost loved him, could have grown to love him, if this monster of a son was left behind… if this monster of a son hadn't stolen her only chance at happiness_ ).

She turns away before she can see his reaction, but imagines the creature her son has grown into will enjoy the damnable act. Perhaps once he finishes the deed, he will slice the girl's throat as payment for her services, and spare her from living a life haunted by his shadow.

(' _Robert are you proud? He'll destroy his heart - like mother, like son_.')

She leaves the boy standing abandoned in the middle of a ruined room. Then she calls to the nearest servant.

"Bring me a drink. Some more of the red wine from earlier should do nicely."

* * *

Lysa comes to her, later that week, describing the gruesome rape of a 14-year-old girl.

"And the moment she regains consciousness, she refuses to give the name of the assaulter, can you believe it? Well, whoever it was, sure did a number on the poor thing. Sadistic. Clearly knew how to hurt a Games trainee though – he almost crushed both her wrists!" She exclaims, before quickly adding, "I was able to mend them back to their original state, of course" (as if anything else would be an offense to her skills) "The damage was painful but not irreversible. Not permanent." Then Lysa corrects herself. "Not physically permanent, at least. I imagine she'll never feel safe again after something so traumatic."

Cersei contemplates the information as she rolls the amber liquid in her crystal glass. "Are you so sure it wasn't consensual?" Cersei smirks. "Perhaps the girl merely started a game she wasn't ready to play?"

Lysa looks at Cersei then, horrified, as if only just remembering what her friend is capable of (' _I poisoned my heart once, you know exactly what I'm capable of… dear Lysa, I'm starting to suspect just what you're capable of too_ ).

"Cersei… this was too far. He took it  _way too far_. I erased his name from where he  _carved it into her stomach_ before anyone could see it. But gods, what if I hadn't been the one to find her? And he is lucky the girl is too prideful to let anyone think she was, and I quote, 'weak enough' to be assaulted." Lysa shakes her head, baffled by the girl's stubbornness. "She refuses to tell a soul! And would you believe that, once she was lucid enough, after all the pain meds I had to dose her with to sew up her lacerations and realign all of her dislocations, that she threatened  _my_ life should I tell anyone?" Lysa scoffs. "Ungrateful wretch. But, I guess, what else can you expect from the South?" Lysa contemplates for a moment before continuing her tirade. "Maybe that's why she is so ambivalent about the whole thing. Bet she must have grown up expecting to be raped at some point." Lysa rolls her eyes. "She probably expected she'd at least get some coin for it though."

Cersei shrugs, uncaring. She grows bored with discussing the antics of her son.

( _she bred a monster, she isn't surprised_ )

She sees Robert's horrified face reflected from the bottom of her glass. It's always easier to see the details of his expression when the glass is empty.

"Would you like another drink?"

* * *

Gendry starts staying at her house more often. And though she is often preoccupied with her auctions, when she takes the time to notice, she realizes Gendry returns to her manor later and later. He says he is training, and he keeps his rank at number one, so his grandfather doesn't question the boy's later hours.

Cersei sends one of her servants to spy.

( _'I'm bored,'_ she justifies to herself.)

The servant's report is… troubling.

"My lady, he was with the Southside girl, the one who they call the Knife Mistress. They were… engaging… in one of the Training Centre gyms."

"Define engaging." Cersei demands, suspecting exactly what type of physical altercations her son is partaking in with the gutter rat. (Clearly, the incident that Lysa cleaned up hadn't been enough to sate Gendry's appetite for the girl).

The servant stutters. "W-Well… it looks like he is… training her?"

Cersei frowns. Helping his competition is something that is likely to get him strangled by Tywin, and the girl flayed, so why risk it _? Why would he do that?_

Cersei doesn't realize that she has spoken her latter thoughts aloud until her spy responds with a reddening face. "I guess you can say, she pays him well, my lady. Or at least… she pays what he wants. "

Cersei waves her hands impatiently, motioning for him to continue. However, she has little doubt over exactly how the Southern whore is repaying her son for his lessons.

"Two days ago… I think her payment was letting him choke her near to death while he… while he, umm..." the spy faces the ground, perturbed and appalled by what he witnessed and not inclined to relive it by saying the words aloud.

_'And just when I thought you couldn't become any beastlier.'_

Cersei decides tonight is a vodka night.

 _'Monster for a son, monster for a father, monsters all around me._ '

( **'Inside you too.'**  Whispers the cup.)

* * *

It is unsurprising when Gendry wins the right to compete in the Games as the District 2 representative.

Each district has different ways to select a champion when there is more than one person interested, which there always is. In District 2, interested competitors usually train at the centres. The best centre (the one known for producing the most Victors) is, of course, the one which Tywin attended and which Tywin sent Gendry to. And then, at the end of each year, District 2 hosts a 'Pre-Games' where they have those who rank the highest in the brackets of the highest levels compete against each other. However, in order to do so, they need nomination from the Centre they are enrolled in.

Gendry is unusually young. The nearest to him in age during the Pre-Games is eight years his senior.

Gendry wins the right to be a tribute by a landslide, and Cersei knows all of District 2 anticipates that he will return a Victor. Not just any Victor, but the youngest in history.

She wonders how many of them suspect what he will demand as his District prize, which will be owed to him by their District if he returns with a crown.

(Gendry is hardly subtle. His eyes follow the girl when she's near, and look for her when she's gone.)

* * *

This year, the Games are to be held in District 13.

It is not uncommon for tributes to be injured, but they don't often die.

To Cersei's dismay, the giant from District 9 is Gendry's  _only_  real competition.

She hopes District 9 wins, or at the very least, does her the service of snapping Gendry's neck.

_('Snap, crack, dead, done.')_

* * *

**+-{+}-+**

* * *

Tywin sits in the Mayor's solar, greeting the newest Games Victor. He supposes he should be proud of his grandson.

"Congratulations," Tywin begins, "you bring great honor to the Lannister name, as well as pride to our District."

Gendry doesn't bother with greetings and doesn't acknowledge the compliment. Instead Tywin's heir lounges insouciantly in the chair across the Mayor's desk, and smirks. "And the District owes me a reward for it."

The boy's response is a testament to why Tywin can't bring himself to truly be proud – why Tywin can't bring himself to be anything more than  _content_  – that the Lannister legacy has secured another championship. Moreover, one that will go down in history: the youngest Victor.

_'Entitled brat.'_

"And what would you request?" Tywin asks evenly, as if he doesn't already know what Gendry's answer will be.

"Arya. I want complete ownership. Her body, her decisions, her  _life_ ; she's entirely mine."

Tywin laments over the creature in front of him, and recalls the  _incident_ that Lysa informed him of from three years ago. It was one of his smartest moves, employing and supporting the promotions of Lysa when she was a child – it allowed him to monitor the actions of his daughter while his employ of one of the Centre's trainees allowed Tywin do the same with his heir. Tywin can't help but wonder how much of his grandson's cruelty is born from Tywin's own relentless training of the boy, versus how much is due to his daughter's callous indifference towards her son. Perhaps it is simply the boy's breeding, Robert's Baratheon blood sullying the Lannister name.

And Gendry's cruelty is truly a cruelty that is unmatched; Tywin remembers  _every sickening detail_  of the gory report given by Lysa, of what the boy was capable of at just 16 years old. Of what he did to the girl he now wants to own. He doesn't doubt that Gendry had given his little band of followers leave to anything that wasn't assault or permanently disfiguring to the girl in order to restrain her while he was away.

_Tywin does not regret._

He does not regret disposing of his impotent wife (Lysa had covered his tracks well). He does not regret arranging a structure collapse during an exposition and telling Lysa to get rid of Cersei's daughter (girls were useless, a pain to barter off. And Tywin needed something to force Cersei to realize how she had compromised herself, something to reawaken her desire to be rid of her Eastern husband.) That being said, Tywin does think the execution of the disposal could have been handled much more discretely. If it had been, he would have had some room to get rid of Gendry's obsession with the Southerner at its onset when the boy was ten. Unfortunately, Cersei was sloppy and emotional when she poisoned her husband. Thank goodness Lysa cleaned up most of that mess, but whispers still arose regarding what  _really_  happened to the  _lovable_  Victor from the East.

_'Perhaps it is time to appease the sheep in the lower areas of District 2 once more.'_

"Only if you'll have her as a bride. I'll not have the populace believe I gave out one of our citizens – a favoured future Games candidate, no less - to be my grandson's bed slave." Tywin sneers, "even a gutter rat from the South."

Gendry growls. "I  _won._ She's mine. I can have her however I want. I can drag her onto the streets and fuck her on the steps of the main hall with everyone as witness. She's  _mine._ "

Tywin does not falter. "Wed her, or I keep her away from you by wedding her to another—"

Tywin does not finish –  _cannot_  finish.

Gendry's hands are around his throat.

The boy is terror-inducing, with thick brute strength, raging murderous gaze, and a spine-chilling icy tone. "You haven't frightened me in a long time. I'm a Victor now, your funds mean nothing to me.  _You_  mean nothing to me. Give me Arya, or I'll rip off your fucking head."

* * *

**End of Chapter 3**

* * *

_Listen stranger,_

_be ever so wary._

_For there is danger_

_in a single story._

* * *

**REVIEW PRETTY PLEASE, SO I KNOW PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY READING THIS, LOL!**

**So I know that I promised this chapter would be full of Gendrya, but I SWEAR, the next chapter is literally Gendry's POV of everything that Cersei has seen over the years. Hint: Cersei is** **really** **off base.**

**What do think of the writing, grammar, plot pace, dialogue, etc? Constructive criticism and feedback always welcome!**

* * *

**Preview of Chapter 4: how to wear a mask**

_We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin. – André Berthiaume_

-x-

"Mom, where's my dad?" … " _Dead_. Because of  _you_." … Then his mom throws an empty bottle at his head…He never asks his mother about his father again.

-x-

"It's not pity"…"Then what do you want in exchange. No one does anything without wanting something in return"…He stares at her lips for too long, and she notices…She pushes him away, terror in her eyes, "get away from me!"… "No, I wouldn't make you, I didn't mean  _that!_ "… "Yes, you did. I should have known. You're  _disgusting_  and you're just like every other entitled West-side bastard–"…Gendry freezes, grabs her and turns her to face him. "Like  _who_?"… Arya freezes, realizing she has said too much.

-x-

Gendry wants to hide it, but Arya says not to bother. He asks if it will be traced to her and she looks at him as if he is a dunce, and says, "No one traces anything. No one cares about dead bodies in the South."

-x-

'Let me save you.'

'I can save myself, just fine.'

-x-

"I wasn't born in the South."...Gendry's ears perk up at her quiet words. He is unbearably curious as to where this mysterious girl is truly from. She answers without him asking. ..."The North." She says, almost reverently. "I was born in the North."... Confused, because what brought her to the South of all places?... "My father... trusted someone he shouldn't have."

-x-

"Marry me."

-x-

- **FINALLY**  you will see Gendry's POV of growing up, and what REALLY happened between him and Arya. And you see some Sansa!

* * *

  **Responses to Reviewers**

* * *

**BIG HUG MASSIVE THANK YOU'S to the reviewers so far!**

**Laurenbull** : Ooooohhhhh will you find the next chapter mind-turning (hopefully) when you see Gendry's POV of what really happened. I promise, Gendry is NOT Ramsay in this story, and Cersei's POV is VERY skewed. Which you will see more of next chapter :D ! Thanks for the review!

 **The Wolf Raven:**  I'm so happy you gave this story a try and are enjoying it. Hopefully this chapter was worth the fav/follow. Thanks for the review :D

 **staleyj33** : thanks for giving the story a chance! Hopefully this chapter was okay, I promise you'll get Gendry and Arya next chapter. You will also see Sansa, and boy will that one be a shock ;) Thanks for your review!

 **Forbritisheyesonly** : THANK YOU :') Such a heartwarming compliment! I promise, Gendry is NOT Ramsay. You will see what ACTUALLY happened (and not Cersei's skewed view) in the next chapter! Arya is coming up!

 **AllIdiotsMustDie** : Thank you for your revie,w hopefully you enjoyed this chapter as well!

 **Guest** : Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for your review :)


	4. Part I - how to wear a mask

**_Disclaimer:_ **

_George R. R. Martin & HBO own A Song of Ice and Fire & Game of Thrones, Suzanne Collins owns Great Games, and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*_

* * *

**_Detailed Summary:_ **

_"Are you afraid? Good... In real life, the monsters win."_

_The 13 Districts of Westeros take turns hosting an annual inter-district competition. "The Great Games" is a grand tourney where each District chooses one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks_ _(usually physically taxing, gory, etc.)_ _. The Victor wins fame and fortune, but some Districts have extra incentives..._

_Gendry Lannister wins the 72nd Games, and it looks like his prize is Arya Stark from the South._

_(Only it's really Gendry Baratheon and Arya Stark from the North, who would both sooner save each other rather than hurt each other, so how did it come to this?)_

_Reminder: We're in a pseudo-Hunger Games AU (i.e. some elements of HG, but I am sticking to GOT & ASOIAF characters). We are also in a pseudo-Hunger Games verse in terms of technology. No Capitol, just 13 Districts who take turns hosting the Great Games. District 2 is where the story is currently set, and District 2 is broken into 4 areas: West, _ _East,_ _North, South. The West is_ _the most affluent, and home to all but one of the District 2 winners_

* * *

**_Story so far:_ **

_Gendry Lannister's mother, Cersei, is annoyed that her son's friends (including Ramsay and Ned) have delivered Gendry's "prize" to her doorstep. The prize is a girl, one who has been a part of Gendry's (and thus Cersei's) life for far longer than she'd like to admit. In Chapter 2, we more about Gendry's biological father (Robert Baratheon, the first non-West Victor), Gendry's maternal grandfather (Tywin Lannister, a Victor himself descending from a long line of Victors), Dr. Lysa Tully (Cersei's best friend, also from the East, she is the youngest District 2 citizen to be registered as a physician), and the divisions of District 2 (West = posh, traditionalist, wealthy; East = lower/middle working class; South = the "slums"; North = mountains that are mined). Specifically, we learn that Tywin has a chip on his shoulder regarding needing a male heir to further his family's long line of Victors, and expects Cersei to deliver him the heir by seducing Robert. Cersei marries Robert, but unexpectedly begins to care for her husband (to the point where she considers disobeying her father when he instructs her to "dispose" of Robert). Cersei considers running away with Robert and their second child (that she is pregnant with), i.e. abandoning Gendry to Tywin so that her father will be satisfied with an heir and not motivated to hunt down Cersei/Robert/second child. But, tragedy strikes. Robert has to deal with an exposition structure collapse and save the lives of his students, and is not told that his wife has gone into premature labour. Robert (from Cersei's perspective) is not there for her when she gives birth to a stillborn daughter. In retribution, she ultimately follows through with her father's orders to dispose of Robert. It's a bit sloppy in that she chooses a poison to cause heart failure. Lysa covers for her by doing the autopsy report. Cersei has complicated feelings towards Gendry (see Chapter 3 summary), which she deals with by literally ignoring Gendry's mistreatment by her father_ _and spending her time drinking and spending money at auctions (which are just excuses that enable her to buy even more alcohol to bypass Tywin's attempts to curb her alcoholism). In Chapter 3, we saw Cersei's POV of Gendry's 'obsession' with Arya. Cersei thinks 16-year-old Gendry raped and tortured Arya when she was just 15 years old. And then Cersei was informed by of one her spies that Gendry coerced Arya into replaying the same (and worse) in exchange for training lessons from him. This chapter, we find out what really happened between Gendry and Arya._

_Also in Chapter 3, Gendry wins the pre-Games in District 2 (which is how District 2 decides their tribute), and the Great Games hosted this year by District 13. We see some of Tywin's POV when Gendry goes to the Mayor's office to collect the 'extra' prize owed to him by District 2 (for him becoming a Victor and bringing the title back once more to District 2). Gendry tells Tywin he wants his prize to be Arya. Also from Tywin's POV, we learn that Lysa and some other unnamed trainees all work for Tywin to report to him on his daughter and grandson; that Tywin killed his wife (remember in Chapter 2, how Cersei was dissuaded from her suspicion of him doing so by Lysa?); and that he arranged to have the exposition structure collapse & Lysa induce premature labour/ poison Cersei's unborn daughter (remember the tea Lysa offered Cersei after Robert left for the Exposition?)._

_Now we find out what really happened over those years, from Gendry's POV! Well, after a little blurb from Cersei in current time, of course, since I can't get enough of writing her._

* * *

**Responses** to reviewers and **Preview of Chapter 4 Part II**  at the **end** of the chapter!

 *****Trigger warning:** Non-explicit non-con when you reach the red-light alleys scene. I'll mark it with an '*'

* * *

**The Great Games**

* * *

**Chapter 4, Part I:**

_how to wear a mask_

* * *

_"A man has a thirst. A man does not drink for a day and night._

_A boy could make a friend."_

_~ Jaqen H'ghar, Game of Thrones_

* * *

**Cersei, age 39**

* * *

Despite being pleasantly buzzed, Cersei is  _bored_.

So, as usual, she decides to seek out her own entertainment. Unfortunately, there are no auctions to travel to (i.e. her cellar is well stocked from her latest expedition). So instead, she opts to pay a visit to her newest house guest. Cersei opens the elaborate door to one of their dozens of guest rooms, and sees the urchin's form carelessly tossed onto the bed. The rodent is still very much wrapped in the bloodied ropes and chains from earlier, only they are now extended to the bed's bannisters. She is gagged with a filthy cloth.

Cersei carefully approaches the lavishly decorated bed. She reaches the other end of it, and is beyond disappointed to see that the girl has been knocked unconscious.

Cersei prods the girl with the open bottle in her hand, and then with a shove, but the wretch doesn't stir.

' _Probably knocked out from the drugs Gendry's motley band of idiots used on her.'_  Cersei sneers in annoyance.  _'Those incompetent fools, robbing me of my show. Oh well, Robert and I can make our own fun in the winery.'_

* * *

Cersei is drunk out of her mind when she revisits the princess that has been locked away in the tower.

This time when she opens the door, it is clear that the girl is awake. The brat is struggling to dislodge the restraints from the bedposts.

Cersei examines the squirming captive and begrudgingly admits that the girl could be pretty if her face wasn't snarled in hatred and her left cheek wasn't turning purple. Cersei's hazy eyes hone in on the greenish-yellow splotches that border the violaceous patch marring the girl's face. " _Hmm_." Cersei sing-songs mockingly, pointing towards the younger girl's cheek. "Gendry won't be happy that you've been marked."

(' _By someone other than him, at least,'_ Cersei thinks cynically.)

The girl's scowl deepens.

Cersei smiles derisively. "Let's have a deal, yes? I've grown bored,  _again_. And you seem not so boring. So how about I remove that dank strip of cloth my son's little underlings stuffed down  _your_  throat, and you don't go trying to claw out  _mine_. Deal?"

Arya furrows her brown brow in suspicion, but ultimately nods. Her ash eyes are clearer from the drugs now.  _'Good,'_ thinks Cersei. Games aren't fun when the other player is sleeping.

 _'_ _I wonder which concoction of drugs they used to knock you out… And I wonder if my beastly son will use the same to keep you in his bed.'_

Cersei rips out the fabric, doing her best to keep her elegant hand away the urchin's teeth.

The girl, clearly parched, starts coughing immediately once her mouth is free.

Cersei could offer water, but that's just so far away. So she pours some wine from her bottle down the girl's throat instead.

The girl -  _Arya_  - coughs harder. "That's  _foul_." The Southerner croaks out. "How strong is that stuff?!"

Cersei ignores Arya's questions in favour of her own. " _Hmm._  I am curious... Why not just give in? If Gendry wants you, he'll take you. You should be grateful to have caught the eyes of a future Victor, and such a handsome one at that. You'll never have to work a day in your life." Cersei traces her hand against the plush silk duvet as she speaks. "Just lay on your back, spread your legs, and you will want for nothing."

Arya scowls. "He wants more than a passive doll."

 _'_ _Oh, don't worry. I remember Lysa's words about the alley and the spy's words about the how he made you pay for his training. I know exactly how depraved his palate is. Robert would hate me for letting his son grow to be such a beast.'_

Cersei takes a larger gulp of her wine, before forcing a smirk between her cheeks. "So either adapt to his tastes or become numb to them."

Arya bristles, clearly enraged. Cersei honestly doesn't know why. She has just freely presented the younger girl with unparalleled wisdom. Lysa had been right about the gutter rat. ' _What an ungrateful wretch.'_

"It's  _disgusting_  that you can so blithely talk about his… his  _tastes_. He's your  _son_."

"Yes, yes, yes." Cersei carelessly swings the bottle in her hand, and nearly knocks Arya in the head with it. "Son, spawn, beast, monster. All the same, really. But I'm  _bored,_ remember? So then, girl, what is your grand plan? Some half-arsed make-believe dreams of escape?" Cersei's gaze shifts to the large window on the other end of the room. "Or perhaps you plan to gut me, and then use my innards as rope to propel yourself down from your tower?  _Hmm_?"

Arya frowns, almost sulking. She looks to the side. "He'll grow sick of me eventually."

A barking laugh rips out of Cersei.  _'Oh, you sorry, naïve little fool.'_  She keeps laughing, and laughing. Gosh, she hasn't laughed like this since the third time she nearly suffocated baby Gendry. "Oh you stupid,  _stupid_  Southern wench. Gendry has been  _obsessed_  with you since he was  _ten. years. old_." Cersei punctuates each of her final words by poking the girl's bruised cheek with the open end of the wine bottle, and Arya flinches away each time. "My little beast has been planning your life with him for a  _long_  time." Cersei laughs once more. " _Sick of you?_ " She scoffs. "Spare me."

Arya snarls and renews her efforts to pull herself out of the restraints. "Then I'll kill him. I won't just let him—"

"Why not?" Cersei smiles smugly. "You've let him do a lot of things to you before."

Arya freezes.

"Oh yes, I know so many things about you. I know all about how you  _paid_  him for his training lessons, and about that little alley incident when you were –  _hmm_  how old were you again, just fifteen? You must have been  _really_ desperate for that extra coaching. Well, on top of being clueless. I mean, you truly didn't think it odd that he never went after any other girl? He undoubtedly had other offers – girls desperate for their sons to have his eyes and his name along with access to his future Victor's funds. You didn't think it suspicious at all that he kept coming back to you?"

Arya shakes her head slowly, her disbelief growing. "I need to compete. I can  _win._  I will win. I won't be dependent on him for the rest of my life."

In that moment, Cersei almost feels sorry for the girl.

In that moment, she is also almost impressed by Gendry.

Not proud, dear Gods no, but impressed. The manipulative little bastard knew she came from nothing, knew that she was desperate to win the Games, knew that the private training every other trainee accessed was out of her financial range, and then he leveraged that knowledge over her head.  _'He found a weakness and exploited it. It looks like he grew into a true Lannister after all, despite his looks.'_

(An image of Robert calling young Gendry his "little Baratheon boy" tries to form in Cersei's mind, but she shoves the memory away by shoving some more amber liquid down her throat).

Instead of remembering, Cersei sighs almost-pityingly at the girl. "And would Gendry let you do that? More than one Tribute has died in those perverse games, and quite a few come back with some crippling injury or another." Cersei then feels her almost-pity twist into something more-than-cruel. "Gendry wouldn't want his favourite doll to break." She uses the bottle to poke at the girl's stomach, still tied up with so many restraints. She pokes at it again, harder, just because she can. "He wouldn't want the womb that will hold his heirs damaged in any way."

Arya is quiet for a long time, not meeting Cersei's gaze and plainly lost in her thoughts, before she speaks again. "You… know about the alley?"

 _'_ _Such a soft whisper from such a rancorous girl.'_

Cersei smiles, wider than before. A bit more maniacal too. "I'm the one who suggested it. I had thought it would… discourage you. I thought I'd give him a little power trip over you, and finally end his obsession. Had I known doing it would feed his obsession further, I probably would have just advised that he kill you back when you were still a nobody… back when you would have been another faceless corpse in the filthy Southern streets lining the Red-Light Alleys. Another southside corpse that nobody would have given a second thought."

 _'_ _Now you're the infamous 'Mistress of Knives', a little prodigy that the Trainers whisper about. Just like they did for Gendry.'_

Perhaps Arya reads Cersei's thoughts from her emerald eyes, because the young girl starts grasping. "My Trainers want me to compete."

 _'_ _Oh, this is so much fun.'_

Cersei beams.

"Your trainers will rather you  _breed._  After all, two little monsters like you both? Won't you produce just the beastliest little Victors for District 2. One after another, they'll strap you to his bed," Cersei pokes at Arya's restrains. "Just like this. And then they will let him fuck you senseless; encourage him to pound you into the mattress again and again, until you've become nothing more than womb for his seed, spitting out babe after babe until you've shrivelled yourself up."

Arya pales. "I'll carve out my damn womb," she hisses.

Cersei snorts in disbelief. "You really are a pretty,  _vicious_  little thing aren't you? It's no wonder he is so obsessed with you. You might just be as monstrous as him."

* * *

**.x.X.x.**

* * *

**Gendry, age 6**

* * *

Gendry's first day at the Training Centre goes so, so well. He is easily the top of his bracket and probably even his Level, besting the others by leaps and bounds in both the formative skills display and the endurance testing _. 'Grandfather will be pleased.'_  He thinks, grinning in relief. Gendry will be reporting to his grandfather when he visits the older man's manor for dinner tonight. Despite Gendry's eagerness to share his success, it is not just the victories from today's sparring activities that hold the young boy's thoughts. No, it is what happened at the end of the day, after the praise of the Centre trainers. ("You're a future Victor, Gendry. No surprise, really, given your blood.")

When lessons were finished, when the trainers finished lauding his skills, many of his classmates were picked up by their fathers.

 _'_ _Why is my father not here?'_  Gendry frowns.  _'Shouldn't I have a dad too?'_

Gendry is escorted to his mom's manor by one of his mom's servants. He tries to chat with the staff, asking the older woman if  _she_ knows where is father is. The lady stiffens. "That is not for me to comment on, Master Gendry."

The servant lady does not talk much (at all) after that, despite Gendry's multiple attempts to start a conversation. It's fine though, he just recounts his day to her, even if she doesn't respond with anything other than "yes, Master Gendry". She seems to want to reply, and there are so many times that she almost smiles. He could swear he saw the corner of her mouth twitch when he said that his favorite part of the day was seeing his best friends Ned and Ramsay, and showing them the 'serious face' he had been practicing in the mirror all last week to look more like his grandfather.

(Because he looks nothing like his mom, and nothing like his grandfather, and isn't that strange? Ned has light blonde hair like his own mother and purple eyes just like his father, and Ramsay looks exactly like his father, right down to the pale eyes and blotchy skin. It would be nice to look like his family, to look like he belonged with them.)

 _'_ _Maybe I look like my father too?'_

Gendry doesn't know. He doesn't even know his father's name, let alone what the man looks like.

By the time he and the staff walk up to his mom's manor, Gendry is brimming with curiosity.

 _'_ _Is my dad away on a trip? Ramsay's father goes on loads of trips to District 1 for work. I wonder when my dad will be back?'_

The serving woman leaves him at the door, off to do her other duties. She bows when he thanks her. Gendry doesn't understand why they always bow to him, but it's nice to have people closer to his height instead of always staring up at giants, so he supposes it's okay.

He toes off his shoes at the parlor of his mom's manor and one of the other servants scuttle towards him to take them away and to take his summer coat. "Is my Mom here?" he asks the man. The older man bows, points towards the kitchen, and then bows again before hurrying off.

Gendry frowns, nervous now. He isn't sure which of his moms he will meet today. Sometimes he comes at a time when she hasn't drunk too much, so she just stares at him, but at least then he can be in the same room with her for a bit.

Other times (most times) are… bad. Those are the times he comes too late.

(Too late happens too often. He doesn't understand that until he is much older -when he is trying to mask memories that he never wanted, while burying his face in the soft neck of a grey-eyed girl. A resilient girl, who was also cursed with a horror of a history that she didn't deserve.)

He cautiously approaches the kitchen. His footsteps echo loudly in the empty hallways against shining - but cold - marble floors _. 'I have to fix that.'_  He thinks.  _'Grandfather says Victors walk silently.'_

He turns the corner, and he thinks he hears her talking. He finally reaches the kitchen, where her back faces him. She's alone, and she's laughing.

"Did you hear a funny joke?" He asks excitedly. Jokes are funny. It would be nice to hear a joke. It would be nice to laugh with his mom.

She freezes, and slowly turns towards him. Her green eyes are as glassy as the half-empty bottle in her grip. When she twists to face him, he can see two more empty bottles behind her. The glass shells are rolling worryingly closer towards the counter's edge.  _'I came too late, I always come too late.'_

She sneers. "The only joke in my life is  _you._ "

She laughs again, harsher than before. Gendry flinches, it doesn't sound nice.

 _'_ _She's drunk. Again.'_ But Gendry is curious enough about his father that he risks asking her about him anyways, even though she is wobbling and her words are slurring and she's cackling hysterically. It is hard to say his question loud enough to be heard over her sharp peals of laughter, but he says the words as clearly as he can.

"Mom… where's Dad?"

Her laughter stops abruptly. An ugly look takes over her face (which is difficult for his mom, because she is so pretty, the way he imagines the Queens of old used to look).

" _Dead_. Because of  _you_."

Then his mom throws the bottle in her hand at his head.

He ducks, quite adept at dodging the byproducts of her rage. The dark glass shatters against the wall behind him, a shower of shards that bathe his back in golden liquid.

His Mom screams.

"How dare you!? How dare you ask me about him! You killed him. You beast,  _you monster._  Get out!  _Get out!_ Get out of my damned house!"

He never asks his mother about his father again.

* * *

**Gendry, age 8**

* * *

He sleuths through the many shelves of the Training Centre library until he comes upon a history textbook with detailed profiles of the more recent Victors. Gendry learns a lot from the book.

He learns that Robert Baratheon, Victor of the 52nd Great Games, married Cersei Lannister just two years before he was born.

Gendry learns that Robert Baratheon had dark hair and blue eyes,  _'just like me'_ , and that he was born in the East. The only non-West Victor from District 2 ever. He learns that Robert Baratheon spent his time as a Victor by volunteering as a Trainer at the Centre, helping with the Centre's Expositions, and even starting a fund to help poor trainees.

 _'_ _Robert Baratheon.'_ Gendry whispers the name again and again, with an awed smile on his face. _'Dad.'_

And then Gendry learns about how an otherwise healthy Victor in the prime of his life died of ' _sudden_   _heart failure'._

He shuffles down a few aisles, to the medical section of the library. He doesn't know what heart failure is, so he tries to find a healing textbook from the Training Centre library that will help. One that will tell him all of the things that can cause heart failure. He doesn't understand any of the books he finds. There are too many big words like  _ventricle_ and  _pulmonary edema_ and isn't  _bronchiole_  a type of vegetable? He shakes his head, frustrated at his lack of knowledge, and searches out his Aunt Lysa.  _'Aunt Lysa is a famous doctor, she would know.'_

He walks to her condo. It's one of the fancy ones by the hospital, that starts on the first floor but her space goes all the way up to the eighth floor. He knocks on the door, swinging back and forth on his feet until it's opened by Aunt Lysa's servant, Gilly. Gendry tells Gilly he needs to see Aunt Lysa. He is told that Dr. Tully is working late again. So, Gendry perches on one of her fancy couches, and waits. She takes long enough that he ends up napping.

Aunt Lysa shakes him awake at some late hour, and he finally gets to ask her. "Aunt Lysa, is there a way to give someone else heart failure?"

(Because he needs to know if his mom was telling the truth, if he really killed his own Dad.)

Aunt Lysa smiles warmly at him. "Of course not, sweet boy. Now get those dreary thoughts out of your mind. How about you tell me more about how you're doing with your training while I walk you back to your Mom's manor, hmm?"

Gendry is small, and young, but Grandfather has trained Gendry to tell if a person is lying. And he's good at it, with everyone except his mom and Grandfather. He never thought he would have to use the skill on his aunt.

 _'_ _Aunt Lysa lies.'_

(It is a sad lesson to learn, but an important one.)

He goes to one of the student doctors in the Training Centre the next day instead. They like to show off, the same way the older trainees do. So he approaches a pair of them, who are laughing in the corner of the cafeteria as they eat their lunch. He asks them the same question. They look worriedly at each other, not subtly at all, before trying to change their faces and reassure him that it isn't possible.

Gendry is seething.  _'Everyone lies.'_

He is out of options, and is considering other people to ask when he happens upon an opportunity by chance (or more so because he needs to get a laceration on his shoulder stitched up – ' _stupid Ramsay and his stupid knife'_ ). Jon Arryn, one of the older nurses, takes care of a lot of the minor injuries, and so Gendry is sent to him.

Gendry knows that a lot of the other doctors and nurses don't like Nurse Jon, because he's from the East. Grandfather's words echo in Gendry's ears:  _'Those from the West matter. Those from the East are beneath us. And those from the South? They are dirt'_. And yet, despite what everyone thinks and despite his grandfather's words, Gendry likes Nurse Jon. The older man is kind, and when he is stitching up Gendry's injuries he always asks him about things other than fighting – like Gendry's favourite colour, or his favourite food. (Sometimes, it is nice to have someone who treats him like a person instead of a trainee.)

"Nurse Jon, is there a way to give someone heart failure?" Gendry asks, once the man is done suturing Gendry's arm.

The man gives Gendry a firm look, a  _knowing_  look, one that then evolves into sadness and even a bit of pity. "Yes, Gendry, there is. But, you best not ask that again."

 _'_ _Some people tell the truth.'_

"Can a baby cause it?"

For a second, Gendry thinks he sees rage flicker in Nurse Jon's eyes. But the look is gone so quickly that Gendry supposes he might have just imagined the ugly emotion on the kind man's face.

"No, Gendry. But an angry  _adult_  can."

Gendry now understands something he shouldn't. So before going home, he cries in a hidden place. It is his own secret shelter, with walls composed of a thick copse of white-barked trees with red leaves. An isolated area that stands out just enough from the other colorful trees lining the banks of the Trident River.

After his conversation with Nurse Jon, Gendry starts spending more nights with his grandfather. Oftentimes, instead of sleeping, Gendry spends the lightless hours in an overly large room in his grandfather's house, staring blankly at the ceiling.

("You killed him. You beast,  _you monster."_ )

Gendry turns depper into his pillow, his cheek meeting the coolness of the unused half. His eyes are wide open despite the light that begins to break through the curtains.

(He wonders if his mother is capable of killing him too.)

* * *

It is later, when he is memorizing the lineages of all the houses in the West, that he asks his grandfather about his dad.

"My dad was born in the East." Gendry pauses. "Is that why I don't have my dad's name?"

Tywin Lannister responds easily, colder than the ice packets given out at the Centre. "You are the Lannister legacy, scion of the greatest House in all of District 2 West." Tywin's eyes tighten. "You would do well to not draw attention to the fact that the East taints your blood."

Gendry repeats the same line he has heard a thousand times. "Because those from the West matter. Those from the East are beneath us. And those from the South are less than dirt."

Tywin nods approvingly. "Exactly. Now, repeat the names and current political seats held by House Bolton."

* * *

**Gendry, age 9**

* * *

Gendry is lonely.

Fellow trainees drift towards him because he is strong, because of his name, and every conversation ends with either sycophantic pandering, unsubtle requests for hints and advice, and for the love of the Gods, even allusions to  _marriage._

Gendry distracts himself from his loneliness with training. And sometimes, even Ned and Ramsay make it a bit better. Especially Ned, who even invites Gendry over for dinner at the Dayne home occasionally.

(Of course, something feels off about Ned and Ramsay. Something is strange about the things they ask, and the things they prod him about. But, those are secrets he will uncover much later.)

Gendry puts on a mask, mirrors the cold sternness of his grandfather and biting indifference of his mother.

(it's all he knows, all he's been shown, so it's easy to reflect)

* * *

Gendry goes to dinner with Ned's parents. Despite hailing from the wealthy House Dayne, Ned's family was not as well-off as the other branches of his House. The rumour surrounding the family was that Ned's father – Duncan Dayne – had eloped with Ned's mother – Jenny Oldstones – who was a woman from a District 7 working class lumber family. This was done against the wishes of Ned's grandfather, Aegon Dayne. Aegon threatened to disinherit Duncan if he did not leave his wife. Duncan refused. And so, Aegon ripped away Duncan's inheritance, and gave it to another Dayne member instead. Despite the… scandal… swirling about the family, Gendry figures his grandfather permits Gendry's association with this branch of Daynes because Duncan still holds one of the elected seats on the District 2 Council.

Either way, Ned's immediate family is normal (or, at least, what Gendry suspects a normal family is  _supposed_ to be like). There are six siblings in total, with Ned being the oldest and constantly overtly favoring his youngest twin sisters, Ashara and Allyria. The dinner is a disorderly and riotous, with several hands reaching every which way across the table, multiple conversations being held on top of each other, and even loud snorts of laughing with spittle of food projecting out of some of the children. The two younger boys spend the dinner exchanging mock insults, responding to each other with exaggerated outrage, and challenging each other to fights to the death with pointed forks. Their parents leave the table for a moment, to do Gods knows what, and the oldest girl – the ever prim and proper Selyse – uses the opportunity to chastise Ashara for bringing a "dirty" doll to the dinner table. Selyse then tries to remove the doll, much to the grievance of the other childrens' eardrums.

"Oi, Selyse! Let up, will you? Just let Ash keep her damned doll." Ned scowls, rubbing his ears and likely hoping no permanent damage was caused by Ashara's piercing wails.

(Allyria squeals in affront. "It's  _my_ doll!" / "No, it's  _mine!_ " Ashara howls.)

Selyse gasps. "Edric Dayne, you watch your mouth!  _I'm_ going to tell mother that you swore! And no, I will not ' _let up_ ', because it is simply not appropriate to bring a  _toy_ to the dinner table,  _especially_  when we have a  _guest._ "

Ned sighs, faced with a brick wall in the form of his unrelenting sister. He turns towards the easier of his siblings to manipulate. "Ashy, why don't you play hide and seek with the doll? I can send it to hide, and you can find it later?"

Ashara pauses her argument with Allyria, seeming to take the offer into consideration.

Allyria pipes up. "Can I play with  _Rhaenys_?!"

Ned frowns. "Rhaenys?"

Ashara scowls. "Her name is  _Elia._ "

Selyse rolls her eyes at Ned. "The  _doll_."

Ned looks at Allyria's clearly finished plate, which she displays to her older brother proudly. "Sure Ally, go play with… Rhae-Eli- _the doll._  And then Ashara can join you when she finishes her dinner." He stares pointedly at the latter girl's half eaten supper. Allyria squeals in delight, grabs the doll from Ashara's begrudgingly loosened grip, and scampers out of the kitchen in the time it takes Gendry to blink.

Ashara seems discontent, still. Unsurprising, really, given that the girl hadn't agreed to the dismissal of her doll and twin. She looks at Ned, with all the seriousness in the world, and continues to barter. "You sent away my doll. So I want a hug."

Ned looks confused at her request.

"Hugs make  _everything_  better." She says, with all the inherent wisdom of a four-year-old.

Gendry feels something twist in his gut.

 _'_ _What's a hug feel like?'_

Gendry wishes he had parents. True ones, like Ned. He wouldn't care if they weren't wealthy. He wouldn't care if meals were loud and chaotic. He wouldn't care if there were dirty dolls at the dinner table. Anything is better than lonely meals on a mahogany table. The few times his grandfather joins him, the meals are filled with questions on his training. The few times Gendry joins his mother, she spends the time drinking, each glass causing more and more hatred to spill from her eyes whenever she looks upon him.

Gendry isn't allowed to befriend staff.  _"Beneath you, and distractions besides,"_ according to Grandfather.

Gendry and Ned are about to head to the River to skip some stones. Before they leave the Dayne's house ( _'home',_ he corrects himself), Ned's mother hugs the blonde-haired boy. Ned brushes her off jokingly. She pats his head. "Come back soon, okay? And try not to get into any trouble, please?"

Ned smiles. "Ya, ya, Mom. You got it." She kisses his forehead before he playfully bats her away with flushed cheeks, a glance towards Gendry, and an embarrassed wail of " _Mom._ " Jenny Dayne laughs warmly at her son's flustered state before waving them both out the doors.

Gendry is struck with an envy so visceral, he cannot breathe.

* * *

**Gendry, age 10**

* * *

It is the first day back from winter holiday. Well, for most trainees… 'holidays' for Gendry just meant extra training under Tywin Lannister. (In Gendry's opinion, the Training Centre was a break from his grandfather's relentless regime).

Gendry strides into the Training Centre flanked by Ned and Ramsay. The other two boys are still in Level 2, but hold the second and first ranking, respectively. Respectable positions, especially for their ages (both being about two years older than Gendry). Gendry is somewhat-newly in Level 3, but has already made the top ranking. His early promotion was probably largely due to his utter thrashing of Level 3's first ranked last week.

There are two others who tag along behind the trio, Joffrey and Lancel Waters. The two brothers snivel, whine, and are just too freaking incompetent for Gendry's liking. Unfortunately, he is forced to tolerate their presence because their father was the Deputy Mayor to Gendry's Grandfather.  _'By the Gods, six years in, and they are still mid-ranked in Level 1. Useless. Absolutely useless.'_

All the Levels gather in the Centre's main hall for daily morning assembly. Other than the weekly sparring matches, where any trainee could challenge another and where Trainers set up specific matches, the morning assembly is the only time other than meals where trainees in different levels interacted.  _'Well, other than specialty classes, sometimes.'_

Usually, Gendry filters out all the irrelevant information being announced, which tends to be most of it. Sometimes, the Trainer of the day truly does just drone on and on and on. Even worse, today the Trainer named Euron was  _gracing_ the stage with his presence. Just looking at Euron gives Gendry the creeps.  _'By the Gods, that Trainer is slimy. And way too in love with the sound of his own damned voice—'_

"…pleased to welcome a new addition to our Training Centre…"

Gendry's attention snaps back to Euron. New trainees rarely join, so he is curious, and he can tell his companions are as well.

"…Arya Stark. She'll be joining Level 2…"

 _'_ _Even more interesting. I would think they would start her at Level 1.'_  She must have some degree of skill, which is even more surprising given her appearance. She's… small. Both in height and in mass, with delicate looking arms. Gendry almost snorts.  _'She looks like she can be toppled by a strong breeze.'_

* * *

Ramsay is chatting with (to) Gendry after assembly, with Ned and the inept duo having trailed off somewhere else.

Ramsay sneers. "I hear she's from the  _South_." He says the word 'South' the way most people say the word  _maggot_. "How dare she strut up here, like she has any right to even breathe the same air as us."

Gendry nods to show he is still listening, but in truth he is a mile away in his head. He wonders if he should focus on swordsmanship or spear-throwing today.  _'Perhaps neither, and foraging instead? May as well since no one left in Level 3 provides any real challenge. If they would just hurry up and promote me to Level 4, I wouldn't have to wait for the end of the week to face trainees that actually pose some degree of difficulty.'_

(Later on, Gendry will reflect and suspect Ramsay probably did what he did next out of some misguided attempt to regain Gendry's attention.)

The new girl walks by them, Euron having just guided her towards the platform between where the Level 3 and the Level 2 trainees train.

"Hey,  _Gutter Rat_!" Ramsay calls out, loud enough for those in the immediate vicinity, including the new girl as well as a few Trainers and trainees, to hear.

She freezes. Her back is to them, so Gendry can't make out the rest of her reaction.

"Ya, you. Southslide  _slut_." He continues to jeer, and some of the nearby Trainees snort (even Euron smirks) at Ramsay's… ' _wit'_. Empowered by the growing crowd's acceptance, Ramsay gives the girl an exaggerated look, from head to toe. "Little thing like you won't last too long with us. But, I bet your type can get some sick geezer's rockers off down in that whorehouse you were found in. Why not tramp on back over there, before your customers sludge up our streets, looking for their favourite pretty Stark cun—'

She turns abruptly, eyes blazing. Despite the burning rage in her eyes, the girl's words are ice. "Spar. You, me.  _Now_."

Ramsay… Ramsay  _laughs._ He laughs so hard, he starts heaving. "Oh, fuck, am I going to enjoy putting a little bitch like you in her place." He smirks. "I'm going to teach you not to talk back to your betters, rat."

Euron points them towards one of the sparring matts. Of course, the duo have gathered a larger crowd now.

* * *

The match is over so quickly, most of the audience is left in shock.

Gendry is left in awe.

 _'_ _She beat Ramsay. First ranking. On her first day.'_

Her legs are still wrapped around his neck, Ramsay's pallor growing and he gasps for air the girls tightening grip won't allow. She calls out that if he (or anyone, based on how loudly she is giving her warning) dares to insult her again, "I'll break your neck, and no Trainer or Training rules are going to save you."

Because that's what they're doing, Euron approaching and coaxing her to release her strangling hold on Roose Bolton's son.

She does, and leaves Ramsay heaving (not from laughter, not this time).

She turns, and meets Gendry's gaze directly for the first time. Their eyes collide, silvery grey locking onto cobalt blue. It feels like a challenge.

' _Shall I depose you next?_ ' She seems to be threatening.

Gendry's fists tighten, and his stomach lurches in anticipation. It's been  _so long_  since he's had a worthy opponent _._  He has been indomitable ice for  _years_ , and here she comes, all fierce fire and searing skill, scorching her way through his expectations. He wonders what it would be like to fight her – even wonders what it would be like to just to be near her – to be so close to such a destructive blaze.

She raises a dark brow.

He smirks in response.

 _'_ _Game on, Arya Stark.'_

* * *

Grandfather gets him a dog, of all things, for his 11th birthday.

It's so unexpected, so bewildering, and such an  _amazing_ gift, that Gendry is rendered completely speechless.

"Well? What will you name it?" Tywin demands.

It's not that large of a dog. Medium-sized, coming up to his knee when it stands on all fours. It's energetic, and covered in a dark brown coat _. 'Almost the same shade of brown as—'_ He mentally shakes the image of Arya Stark out his head.

(only not really, not really at all.)

"Blaze." Gendry smirks, as he pets the creature's head. "His name is Blaze."

* * *

In one of her daily drunken stupors, Cersei warns Gendry that he will regret Blaze.

"Stupid boy, you'll regret that gift when it opens."

Gendry ignores her. She's not even making sense, because Gendry already opened the gift box that Blaze was in on his birthday.

'You're just jealous because I have someone who cares about me now, unlike you.' He thinks viciously. Or then again, maybe he says it. Because his cheek is burning. Did she just slap him? Whatever. Not like it matters, she won't remember his words tomorrow morning anyways.

Blaze's hackles rise, and he growls at Cersei for the attack.

Gendry grins and scratches behind Blaze's ears affectionately. "Good boy. You get a treat when we get to Grandfather's house."

* * *

He watchers Arya finish her spar against Ned, winning embarrassingly easily.

Ned is a better loser than Ramsay  _('not difficult, a troll would be a more gracious loser than Ramsay Bolton'_ ), and congratulates her on a "spar well fought."

Ned's words aren't bitter at all. But that is because it's Ned's  _eyes_  that give away the rage at losing to a girl, a younger girl, a younger girl from the  _South_.

Gendry saw it all happen from his perch on the platform, where he was taking a water break after winning his own spar against one of the mid-ranked Level 4 trainees. Arya and Ned were the last spar of the day, so the trainees are now free to go for the evening.

Gendry lets them filter out before he approaches her.

He wants to tell her that she did well. Instead he hears himself say, "you take too long to draw your knives."

Arya makes him wait until she is finished downing her own water before she deigns to respond. "And you," she smirks haughtily, "rely too much on strength over speed. You're  _slow_."

 _'_ _What nerve!'_  He glowers, before turning and strutting towards the exit.  _'I am_ not  _slow!_ '

(He isn't. Not now. But he will be when it matters most, sometime in the future, and  _'too slow, too slow, too slow; if only I had realized sooner, I could have saved her,'_ will be his new lullaby because of it).

* * *

They spar the next week. He wins.

But not easily.

"I guess I wasn't as slow as you thought. But, you still take too long to draw." He tells her, offering her a hand. "You were almost a challenge."

She swats the proffered assistance away, furious. "Fuck off." She snarls at him, wiping the blood from her split lip before pulling herself off of the ground.

 _'_ _Red is a nice colour on her,'_  he thinks.

* * *

They spar again. At least once every two weeks. She's still in Level 2 (thought Gendry isn't sure why) and he's in Level 3, so their only real opportunities to do so are the end of the week spars.

He starts to look forward to them, and he suspects that, just maybe, she does too.

They snark at each other outside of sparring, giving backhanded compliments while trading haughty advice and outraged indignation.

* * *

**Gendry, age 12**

* * *

Blaze is Gendry's truest friend. His only friend, really.

It is nice, having someone who is genuinely happy to spend time with him. (Blaze and him will spend hours in the evening chasing each other around the Trident after they finish his finishes laps together.)

It is nice, having someone who cares when he comes home. (Blaze excitedly bounds up to Gendry every time he enters the foyer, jumping up eagerly and playfully barking a hello.)

It is nice, having someone talk to. (Blaze sits with him at meals, and sleeps at the foot of his bed. Blaze is Gendry's constant companion.)

It is nice until it isn't nice. (Nice turns into a nightmare he will never forget.)

"No!" Twelve-year-old Gendry sobs.  _"Please_!" He begs and pleads. "No! I won't! I won't do it!"

But he does.

Because Tywin Lannister does not accept no. Tywin Lannister does not accept weakness. And Tywin Lannister does not believe in mercy.

* * *

Once again, Gendry finds the secret shelter encased by large white-barked trees and roofed by their shiny red leaves. The roof is a bit patchy this time, since the leaves have begun to fall. (It may be a bit battered, but the hideaway still stands.)

For the second time, Gendry cries while huddled in his hidden place near the banks of the Trident River. His arms encircle his knees and his hand grips Blaze's collar.

He is alone. Truly alone in every way now.

"Why are you crying?"

Gendry rips his face out of his arms when he hears her voice.

There is no room for denial, his cheeks are stained with tears and his eyes feel puffier than they've ever been, and he's pretty sure there's dry and wet snot on his shirt.

A part of him wants to scream at her to go away.

But the larger part, the part that craves for  _someone_  to care about him, tells her. "My dog… my dog died."

For a minute, her eyes soften. But then she lifts a disbelieving brow and scoffs. "That's hardly a reason to—" She cuts herself off abruptly.

She looks at him, truly looks at him, and maybe she sees that there is more to the story. She approaches him slowly, and then reaches out a hand. He doesn't understand what she is doing, and his confusion paralyzes him.

For a second he thinks her hand is coming towards his neck, but before he can shove the outstretched limb away, it instead stops on his shoulder.

She stiffly pats it. "There, there." She says. It sounds so strained and forced and awkward that Gendry laughs. Even though he thought he would never be capable of laughter again. Because at least she tried, at least she truly looked.

They stay there, silent. Well, she stays silent, standing vigil over him as he crouches and continues to cry at the base of the white-barked tree. When he feels as though he has run out of tears, he wipes his face and stands. If he is shaky in his ascent, she makes no comment on it. He starts looking about the ground, trying to find a fallen leaf that isn't cracked. He almost gets frustrated, before he turns to see Arya offering him a large, unbroken, carmine leaf.

 _'_ _It's just what I need.'_

He walks down the river, and lets the collar float away on it.

He turns, and she is still behind him, giving him the strangest look. His cheeks burn, he is  _so_  embarrassed that she saw him so… so…  _so_ …

"You should wash your face in the Trident. It's reaching dusk now. So if you cool your face with the river water, and then use the stones under the puffy parts of your eye, the dimming lights should be enough to get home so that no-one who runs into you will suspect… anything."

He nods.

She turns to leave.

"Thanks." He pushes the word out quickly and quietly, before he loses the nerve to speak.

She doesn't respond, just continues to walk away.

When she leaves his sight, his hand slowly comes up to cover his shoulder – the place where she had touched him with her palm. It buzzes strangely, and he isn't sure if he wants to rub off the feeling or rub it deeper into his skin.

(Years later, she will tell him that she realized the collar was soaked in blood. She will tell him that she once had her own dog – a  _wolf_ – that met a tragic end too.)

* * *

 _'_ _Victors are capable of killing without hesitation. No matter the target. You let sentiment cloud your mind, and this will be all the more painful because of it. I warned you to never get attached, and you failed to heed my lesson. This is the consequence.'_

* * *

**Gendry, age 13**

* * *

An Annual Exposition is today.

During this one, each trainee goes through three spars (against a trainee below, at, and above their level). Each trainee also participates in four specialist competitions.

Gendry beats every one of his competitors in his combat spars, even the one against a mid-ranked  _Level 5_ despite Gendry still being a mid-ranked  _Level 4._ Moreover, Gendry wins three of the four specialist competitions that he participates in (swordsmanship, the obstacle course, and spear-throwing).

Of course he loses knife throwing. Arya wins that one. He also watches (and silently cheers) as she wins the foraging, stealth, and archery specialist competitions. However, even though she wins all her specialist competitions, unlike him, she loses one of her spars. Her Level 2 against a Level 4. Her against him.

So in the end, he wins the Exposition, which will hopefully sate the Mayor, who was no doubt watching Gendry's every performance with hawk eyes, noting any deficiency with pinpoint precision from his view in the VIP central spectator box.

Once the medals and prizes for gold, silver, and bronze are announced, everyone leaves. But Gendry is – unsurprisingly – still there. He is tensely waiting for the Mayor to finish accepting praise on his behalf, while the man networks and discusses whatever it is that Mayors are supposed to discuss with the other important spectators that sat in the main box.

Gendry's gaze flits about, and he notices that Arya uncharacteristically left her wrist tape on a bench next to him. His observation comes just before he notes that the Mayor is finally approaching him, having just finished with his last fan/ colleague/ voter/ sponsor/ whomever.

Most people would leave the wrist tape be, because most trainees don't bother collecting the materials that they are given by the Training Center. They just leave the items where they are, and the Centre custodians take care of it. However, Gendry has noticed that Arya never leaves the items she is given, that she always pockets any of the items that the Centre gives away for free—

"You lost."

The Mayor baritone is an unpleasant way to be pulled from his musings on Arya Stark.

"Just one specialist station, Grandfather." Gendry's fists clench. "I won the others."

The Mayor frowns.

"You  _lost._ "

Gendry's fists clench as he frowns at the floor.

The Mayor firmly grips Gendry's chin and forces his gaze back to meet to the older man's furious stare.

"Tell me.  _Tell me_  how you  _lost._ " He bites out, the grip on Gendry's chin tightening uncomfortably with every word.

"Because I'm more accurate with my knife-throwing than he is. Pretty self-explanatory, Mayor Lannister."

 _'_ _Arya.'_ He recognizes her voice, even without looking behind his shoulder to confirm who has interrupted Tywin Lannister's burgeoning rant.

The Mayor slowly releases Gendry's chin, and smiles coldly at the girl, who had somehow unknowingly come up behind Gendry. ( _'I can see why she won stealth,'_  he thinks fondly.)

"Congratulations on your silver medal, Miss. Stark. I'm sure the winnings for second place are satisfactory."

Gendry's jaw clenches at the subtle dig at her lack of financial means. But, Arya just smiles back sweetly. "Thank you, Mayor Lannister. But I think we both know that the person who deserves the praise is the one in front of you. After all, he did win the entire Exposition."

Gendry doesn't meet her gaze, but he doubts she is searching for his at the moment either. A fact that is confirmed when she walks towards her wrist tape.

"Have a lovely evening Mr. Mayor." She says impishly, as she tosses the roll of tape in her hand and strolls towards the exit.

 _'_ _Arya.'_

Arya is the first person to  _ever_  stand up for him against Tywin Lannister in any way. Even his own mother abandoned him to the Mayor, repeatedly.

Gendry doesn't see the small quirk of his lips at her whimsical attitude. Or the softening of his eyes as she passes by him. Or the way he nervously scratches the back of his neck and gazes a wistfully at where her wrist tape was.

Unfortunately, Tywin Lannister does.

* * *

Arya is strong, fast, skilled.

She has big, rounded grey eyes and a smattering of freckles over her nose and a couple dotting her forearms too. She has pale skin covering a lean frame, but it seems to be tanned from time spent outdoors.

She looks almost like the porcelain doll that Ned's sisters own. Only Arya is steel, not something so delicate as porcelain.

She has a pouty mouth and a sharp tongue. She has warm dark brown locks that look soft even if she always keeps them out of her face in a harsh pony tail.

Arya can be snarky, and smart, and funny.

The elastic snaps when he tosses her onto the mat during one of their spars, and her hair is let loose. Gendry's cheeks burn, and he is momentarily distracted.

 _'_ _Arya is pretty.'_

* * *

**Gendry, age 16**

* * *

Arya is attractive, and Gendry is not the only one who has noticed.

Gendry is passively doing some biceps curls at the weight training area for Level 5 trainees when he hears them. An older student in Level 3 talking about her to his friend. He hears the little shit talk about how the Training Centre uniform looks on her, hears him describe what he wants to do to her – what he wants to  _make_ her do to him - in disgusting detail.

The next thing Gendry knows, his arm is pressed across the bastard's neck, shoving the redhead against the wall, as the slimy git gasps for air.

"The next time you insult her, I'm going to rip out your tongue." He warns in Tywin's voice.

* * *

She stalks up to him later, frazzled.

"I can fight my own battles."

And then the crazy girl  _shoves_  him into the lockers.

He is dumbstruck. She is perhaps the recipient of the only protective act he has ever done, and she throws his kindness back in his face. She doesn't make any sense, ever, at all.

(She will tell him what the real issue is in the future. She will tell him that half of her appeal to them was that he claimed her as  _his._ They couldn't beat him in a spar, and couldn't beat him to a crown, so they went after her, seeking to beat him in other ways.)

* * *

It is the weekly sparring session again. And of course, she challenges him.

They spar.

He wins. Again. Again. And again.

All three of three rounds.

The last round ends with her on her back. He keeps her felled with his body overlying hers, and his hands forcing her arms down.

She snarls, clearly frustrated that she has yet to beat him.

His gaze follows her expression, landing on the soft pink shade of her chapped lips.

He wonders what it would be like to kiss her.

He suspects she'd taste like salvation... whatever that means _._

(But actually, their first kiss will taste like a lie. And their second kiss will taste like guilt.)

* * *

She wins.

Not the spar, but she wins a round, and that is a feat no trainee their age but her can claim.

She had come at him from behind, and when he had felt her breath on his neck, when he felt her lips behind his ear, he had hesitated and she had taken the opening.

(He wonders if she realizes how she won. He hopes not. That last thing he needs is to worry about her…  _seducing_  him in between dodging her sharp blades)

He can't forget the echo of her breath against his neck.

* * *

They have a second spar with each other, unofficial, in the forest. No spectators.

She wins one round again, and there is no breath on his neck that he can blame it on. She is just that skilled now.

He is proud. Stupidly so, but he doesn't know why.

* * *

He follows her home after Training ends on the day that he loses to her. It isn't for any nefarious purpose, he is just, well he is curious. He knows  _nothing_ about her. And he wants to know. He wants to know who she is outside of the Training Centre.

(He learns. He learns a lot)

He follows behind her, struggling to stay hidden from her range of awareness. And as he stalks her along the streets, she talks him further and further away from the Training Centre. Along the way, he sees her deft hands pickpocketing, and he is amazed. Because he wouldn't have been able to tell if he wasn't so focused on her, and even then he has a hard time discering exactly what movements her hands are making.

She moves in a circle through the streets, eventually ending up along the forest that lines the Trident. It's a different part than where Gendry's hideout is. Instead, she stops in a section of the forest that borders the West and the South. It's a park area that is frequently patrolled by officers who prevent loitering (and occasionally exercise their justice over straying Southerners).

Gendry sees what looks like a bundled sleeping bag – one of the kinds they used to practice survival training with at the Training Centre – and a Centre backpack at the top of one of the trees.

She sighs. "Why are you following me, Gendry?"

Of course she realized he was following her. He figured that out and gave up trying to be subtle about it a few blocks away from the Training Centre. He steps forward until he is standing in front of her. He nudges his shoulder at the tree and frowns. "Is this where you sleep?"

She shrugs. "I find places. It's really none of your concern."

The offer leaves Gendry's lips before his mind processes it. "Stay with me. We have plenty of empty roo—"

She snorts. "I don't need your pity. I have done more than well enough without you and—"

"It's  _not_  pity" Gendry cuts her off in return.

She smiles mockingly. "Then what do you want in exchange. No one does anything without wanting something in return."

His gaze is drawn to the curve of her mouth when she smiles. He doesn't realize, but he stares at her lips for too long.

When Arya notices, she immediately shoves him away from her. Her eyes wide in disbelief and fury and … fear?

"Get away from me!" she shouts.

He realizes then, what she thinks he wanted.

"No, that's not what I… I didn't mean… I wouldn't make you… I didn't mean  _that!_ " He fumbles with his words horribly.

"Yes, you did." She snorts and turns away from him. "I should have known. You're  _disgusting_  and you're just like every other entitled 2 West bastard–"

Gendry's mind freezes at her implication, and his stumbling is over. He reaches forward and firmly grabs her arm, forcibly spins her back to face him.

"Like who?" He growls out.

Arya doesn't respond. She stays silent, likely having realized she said too much.

His grip tightens.

" _Tell me_  Arya."

Something in Gendry's gut tightens in an awful, horrible way. He remembers the words from the Level 3 trainee, remembers what the son of a bitch said he would do to her. Gendry wonders now if anyone ever acted on the words.

"You think that piece of shit from Level 3 was the only one?" She looks at the ground, refusing to meet his gaze. "How many times do you think I've shoved a Trainer's hand off my thigh? Or had to avoid older trainees' painfully unsubtle attempts to get me in a locked room?" She sneers. "Why do you think I'm still in Level 3, Gendry? I've been performing on par with you for years."

She finally rips her gaze from the ground, and when she looks at him, it is with such a profound fury that it almost looks like hatred. "People from the West don't like it when people from the South, or even East, do well at anything. Don't tell me you didn't notice. Why do you think Jon Arryn is still a nurse and has been refused entrance into the medical Academy multiple times, even though he is the smartest of them all? Why do you think no one cared when your  _daddy dropped dead_? Why do you think the Training Centre Head told me to 'make use of the opportunities given' when I told him that Euron tried to shove his tongue down my throat. Why do you think that same Head told me I was being 'overly sensitive' when I stopped Euron by shoving the knife from my boot into his arm?"

Her eyes are searing in their hatred – and it is hatred, he recognizes it plainly now.

"You fucking elitist West side snobs, thinking yourselves entitled to everything and everyone. You may as well put up a literal wall to bar us off, you've made enough figurative ones."

She stops herself, breathing deeply, trying to catch her breath after her rant.

Gendry wants to… console her. But he isn't sure how. He doubts this is the kind of injustice that will be ameliorated with a pat on the shoulder.

She continues. "You probably think you've worked hard for your rank. And you're good, you know. You really are. But, don't kid yourself into thinking that you're some self-made Victor. When that crown is put on your head, it'll be because you had access to  _every_ means needed to put it there. You never had anyone tell you it wasn't yours to wear."

* * *

She refused to come back with him, and perhaps that is a good thing, because the moment he enters his mother's house his anger at Arya's situation manifests as a  _rampage_. He throws vases and relics and rips into his mother's fancy paintings.

For every hardship he thought he had, he realizes she has had it worse.

(She is an orphan, he knows it in his gut now, and he doesn't even know what happened to her parents. But he bets it was terrible, he knows this because she has never mentioned them. Not once.)

The idea that fucking Euron, that other trainers and trainees had… had propositioned her, had  _dared_  to  _touch_  her, with no repercussions…

Gendry's blood is  _boiling._

Not just at the circumstance, not just at the Head and Euron and all those other shits, but at himself too.

His mother interrupts his rampage.

And then… and then she…

Cersei Lannister is truly a monster, he can't believe what he has just heard her suggest.

(he feels guiltier and angrier when he wonders If he is much better than his mother, recalling how, for a second – just for the briefest of seconds – he had considered taking a kiss from Arya as payment)

His mother is (relatively) sober when she suggests the idea of  _assaulting_  Arya as some sort of vengeance for her defeating him. Her sobriety only makes the suggestion more horrifying.

 _'_ _I'm not like you.'_  Gendry tells himself.  _'I'm not a monster. I'd never hurt her, ever. Especially not like that.'_

* * *

He offers to train her. His offer saying the words he cannot.  _'Let me save you.'_

She declines. The fierce look in her eyes responding,  _'I can save myself, just fine.'_

* * *

Later that week, she loses too quickly to him.

Gendry can easily infer that something is wrong with her.

So once again, he finds himself following her after training.

Last time, she had clued into his tailing her quite early on. This time, whatever holds her thoughts must be all consuming, because she doesn't appear to notice him at all.

They walk away from the Training Centre, through West, through the separating forest line, and through the South to the very end. Then he sees her enter an area that sends off all his internal warning bells.

"What are you doing in the Red-Light Alleys, Arya?"

The crowd grows, the light of dusk fades.

He loses her in the crowd.

His heart clenches. He frantically searches through the throngs of drunkards and whores and sleazy clients and shady figures.

 _'_ _No. No. No. Arya, Arya where are you?'_

* * *

***trigger**

* * *

He finds her.

In an alley.

Under a man who has his hands on her throat while thrusting his hips inside of her, her clothing ripped from her body.

Gendry sees red. An all-consuming almost-black red.

In hindsight, he could have pulled the attacker off of her, and given the bastard a slow and painful death. Flaying. Gelding. Ripping off his fucking nails one by one for daring to break Arya.

But Tywin's training takes over. Gendry's red rage is honed efficiency, so all he does is snap the bastard's neck.

( _'Snap, crack, dead, done.'_ )

He looks over to Arya who is staring wide-eyed at the corpse he has just shoved off of her nearly-naked body.

She is completely still, stuck in a stupor.

His fury doesn't abate. "Arya? Arya!  _Arya?!"_ He shakes her shoulders roughly. "Arya, look at me. _Look at me._  Why didn't you defend yourself? Why didn't you stop him? You fucking idiot. Why the hell did you come to this fucking area—."

"No." she shakes her head, dazed, still starring dazedly at the man's cooling body. "No, no,  _no_." The shaking gets worse, her entire body is thrashing now. "No, you  _ruined_ it!" She screams at him, and then she starts sobbing. He has never seen her cry before.

He's seen her staunching blood flow from a broken nose while getting her dislocated shoulder reset, without a shedding a single tear. And now – his eyes zero in onto her hands, and he seethes.  _'What the fuck did that son of a bitch do to her wrists?!'_

There is gross bruising and bones in odd angles along her entire right and left hands.

But here she is, screaming nonsense at him.

He tries to calm her down, and is largely unsuccessful. She becomes hysterical, hitting him and trying to claw at his face but only reaching his neck. Which is so stupid of her, because he knows doing so must be further damaging her wrists.  _'You stupid, stupid girl.'_  He holds her arms steady by her elbows, and tries his best to calm her down. "Tell me." He tells her. "Tell me why you let him do that to you."

Because he knows that she  _let_  him. Because she is the strongest trainee apart from him, who always carries at least two knives on her at a time, and that man was just a man.

"My sister." Arya sobs. "He has my sister, and you just ruined the only way I had to get her back!"

* * *

He takes stock of her other injuries. The ones he can see, at least. It's bad,  _especially_  her wrists. Her hands… they might not be unusable after this. She needs a good physician,  _now_ , and the Training Centre won't be available until tomorrow. He doesn't know where Jon Arryn lives, and he is the only man Gendry knows who might have considered helping her without questions.

Arya refuses to be taken to the District 2 Hospital.

"No one can know, please Gendry. No one can ever know."

There is one option.

 _'_ _She's the competition,'_  hisses a voice in his head that sounds too much like Tywin.  _'Let her hands be crushed, there are other ways you can enjoy her company.'_

He shoves the voice into the deepest corner of his mind, shuts the lock, and chains it up twice. He doesn't ever want to hear that voice again. Besides, Gendry justifies to himself that he is helping her because he hasn't beaten her yet since her defeat of him. Any future times he beats her won't feel like true victories if her wrists are spoiled. Besides, she is the only decent training partner he has. He repeats all of these excuses to himself, even though knows it they aren't true. He knows he is helping her because he cares about her and because  _she doesn't deserve this_.

He covers her bruised and bloody exposed form with his jacket, and then gently lifts her into his arms before making his way through the streets. He tries to stay in the shadows, but honestly, no one seems to bat an eye at the fact that he is carrying a girl that could be unconscious. She has long since stopped struggling, but he wonders if anyone would have bothered to help her even if she did.

Instead of struggling against him, she whispers a horrible story.

"We needed money. We had no place to live, and it was the rainy season. We were cold. We were starving. And it was just the both of us after… after ..." she tapers off.

"And I tried to steal, but there were so many times that I got caught before I got good, and each time I would get beaten. And Sansa, she couldn't take me coming back to her all bloody anymore."

(he doesn't think to ask why two little girls were abandoned. Not tonight. That is not a story he hears until much later).

"So she went to fucking Baelish. And she… she started to work in his brothel. And I slept there at night, in one of the closets, and ate their food. At first, Sansa came to me at least once every night. But then she came back less and less. And even when she did come, I couldn't recognize her, not anymore. So I spent my time while she was… working… I spent that time practicing. And the next term, I got accepted into the Training Center. Into the scholarship spot that your dad's fund set up. So I strode up to that damn brothel after they told me I was accepted, and tried to tell her we could leave. Because I could take care of us now. But Baelish…" She scowls. "He didn't even let me see her. He told me that I had to  _buy_ her. Sansa had started using those stupid drugs, the ones that they give to make the brothel girls forget, and he said he would charge her for them if she left him."

"So I saved up every penny I could from my fund's allowance. Sold any of the free extra supplies we got. Stole my food instead of buying it. I needed to buy Sansa her freedom back. And I went to him three days ago, told him how much money I had, and he told me it wasn't enough." She pauses. "But that… that it could be enough, if I gave him something else too."

* * *

He stops in the back alley behind a familiar condo. He settles her down softly so she is seated upright on the pavement.

Gendry looks at her grimly. "This doctor…" Gendry isn't sure how to say it, so he doesn't bother trying to filter it. "This doctor will only fix you if they think I'm the one who hurt you."

Arya's eyes go blank again, like before, and her voice goes hollow. "Would you like a turn then, Gendry? Is that the cost of your kindness?"

He rips the sleeve of his shirt. And when he stuffs it into her mouth, he finally incites a reaction of her. Her eyes widen in betrayal. For a moment she tenses in defiance, but then she closes her eyes and tries to lie down, no doubt expecting the worst from him.

He takes out the knife from her boot, where he knows she keeps it always.

"This will hurt. Bite on that cloth when it gets too much. Neighbours actually  _do_  care about screams from alleys in the West."

He hates every minute of it, hates the look of his name in her skin.

(he relives being 12, and carving up Blaze, whose coat was the same shade as Arya's hair, and Blaze bled red, and Arya bleeds red, and he can hear her muffled screams the way he heard Blaze's whimpers.)

But this is different from Blaze.

He hurt Blaze to save himself. He hurts Arya so he can save her.

So he carves his first name into her abdomen because he knows exactly what Lysa will suspect when she sees a half-dressed Arya enter her apartment, bloody and bruised and draped in his jacket. After all: Lysa lies, his mother couldn't have poisoned his father on her own, and Lysa wrote the report that said _'heart failure, natural cause'_. Gendry knows that Lysa will do anything for his family, including cleaning up this mess if she thinks Gendry is the one responsible.

Of course, Lysa will tell his mother. Then his mother will think she was right about him all along.

He's carving the "R" into Arya's alabaster skin now.

(But what do his mother's thoughts matter? He stopped caring about her opinion long ago, when she dropped him off at his grandfather's doorstep because she'd rather raise a glass than raise a child. Because she left him at a dinner table after  _seeing_ how Tywin treated 10-year-old Gendry, and the stupid tea-cup from that decisive dinner is still proudly displayed in the glass cabinet, reminding him every visit how unwelcome he is in her manor, and sometimes he dreams of her suffocating him in a crib).

He finishes saving/butchering Arya. He instructs her to walk to the door. Gilly will answer. He tells her to show Gilly the wound.

"I'll take care of the body in the alley." He tells her. "I'll hide it in the river. I can probably drag it by—"

Arya says not to bother. He asks if it will be traced to her and she looks at him, her growing pallor worrying him even as she smirks self-deprecatingly. "Haven't you learned yet? No one cares about dead bodies in the South, Gendry."

Once he sees her being shuffled quietly into the house by Gilly, he makes it just over one block before he runs behind a bush and vomits until he is retching on air.

* * *

When he looks in the mirror the next morning, he sees the evidence of her hysteria on her neck.

His mother smirks knowingly at the gauges in his neck that evening at dinner.

"And here I was, doubting your capacity for cruelty." She says mockingly.

His grip on his fork tightens.

"Then again, I bet she liked it rough. Screamed your name in ecstasy when you carved it into her."

His vision starts going red.

It is silent for a while.

(he uses the silent to cut into his steak, imaging the knife was slicing into Cersei's throat. The blood seeping out of the meat could match the liquor lining her throat.)

"Duncan sent out an invitation. Ned's birthday is coming up soon isn't it?"

Gendry is only half-listening, trying his best to keep the knife on the meat instead of her neck.

"I've heard recycling used things is good for the environment."

 _'_ _What are you getting at, you fowl excuse for a person?'_

"A recycled gift, how novel. Perhaps Ned would enjoy a round with your new doll?"

Gendry shoves his plate off the table. The broken shards dance against the floor, moving to the music of his mother's cackling, as he storms out of the dining room.

* * *

**.x.X.x.**

* * *

**Cersei, age 39 (continued)**

* * *

Cersei snorts in disbelief. "You really are a pretty,  _vicious_  little thing aren't you? It's no wonder he is so obsessed with you. You might just be as monstrous as him."

Cersei doesn't know what reaction she is expecting, but it isn't the knowing little smirk that twists the Southern urchin's lips.

" _Hmm_." Arya mocks. "My grand plan? Well, let's see. Perhaps I'll poison him, a poison that will cause his heart to fail."

Cersei freezes.

Arya continues.

"But not before I have his child first. Then I'll ignore the child after killing its father, leave it with an abusive beast of a grandfather, encourage my son to rape little girls, lush away the rest of my years as a maudlin monster, and—"

Cersei slaps Arya so hard, the girl must be seeing stars.

Arya spits out blood, and gives Cersei a wolfish scarlet-stained grin. "I know things too. I know you're more of a monster than Gendry ever was."

* * *

**A/N:**

**Full disclosure:** it is super disheartening to see a bunch of views/visitors, and then not see any reviews to match it. Part of sharing stories on ffn as writers (for me at least) is getting reader's feedback. What do people like? What do people hate? What turns people away (which of course there must be something if the views/visitors decrease in number as the chapters go on, so it's frustrating to not know what lost readership if no one commented on what made them leave your story). TBH, this story is getting a lot less traction than I had hoped for, so I'm probably going to shift my focus towards my TVD fic or maybe Wolves Aflame. I do have a half completed Part II for this chapter (what the spy saw, Gendrya's secret meetings, Sansa POV, Arya's POV, etc.), so it's not like I'm giving up on this fic completely. It's just tough to prioritize fics that get less reviews/words when you spend so much energy typing them, and you know you'd get a lot more reviews/words if you focused on your other stories/fandoms.

So if you are still reading/enjoying this, PLEASE let me know in a review?

What do you like? What do you not like? Any Grammar/spelling/formatting mistakes (if you see these, pretty  **PLEASE**  point them out to me so I can fix them! This chapter is probably especially littered with them since I kind of just wrote, skimmed, and posted instead of doing my usual editing. I might try to come back one day to fix it, especially since I bet there were some parts that were pretty heavy-handed and not subtle at all).

Can anyone guess why I chose the quote I did at the beginning? (its more in relation to something you'll see in Part II, but I did hint at it in Part I!)

* * *

**Preview Chapter 4: Part II**

* * *

She breathes over his lips. "I don't think you stopped because you hated it or it revolted you. No, I think you stopped because you were afraid you liked it a lot more than you should."

-x-

And so he finds himself running through the Red-Light Alleys again, this time hunting down a different Stark girl.

-x-

"I would rather  _die_  than have to see your face. You're the sire of every terrible thing that ever happened to me. Let me at least die for myself after giving up my life for  _you_."

-x-

"Do you want me to stay?" he asks quietly.

"I don't want you to leave." She admits with a small smile.

-x-

Gendry remembers Ned consoling a young Ashara, and figures it's worth a shot. "Did you… umm… need a hug?"

Arya rases a brow. "A  _hug_?"

Gendry flushes. "I've heard hugs make everything better. I mean, after that, but you know, after what happened the other night I understand if you don't want, I mean." He fumbles grandly, unsure of how to convey that he thinks she needs a hug after -*-*spoiler*-*- versus wondering if she is okay with physical contact like hugs after what happened in the alley.

"I don't want a hug Gendry" He feels his stomach sink a bit, until she adds softly. "But… thanks."

-x-

"No one is better off without their mother."

"Have you met mine?"

"You really despise her that much?"

"The feeling is mutual, I assure you. In some ways, Tywin is preferable only because he still has a use for me."  _He isn't working on any plots to see me dead or mauled, whereas my mother probably has six on the go at any one time._

-x-

"I wasn't born in the South."...Gendry's ears perk up at her quiet words. He is unbearably curious as to where this mysterious girl is truly from. She answers without him asking. ..."The North." She says, almost reverently. "I was born in the North."... Confused, because what brought her to the South of all places?... "My father... trusted someone he shouldn't have."

-x-

"Marry me."

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**Responses to Reviewers**

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**Guest** – thanks so much for your reviews (I absolutely love it when new readers take the time to review on every chapter as opposed to just the most recent) and for letting me know about the AO3 post. That actually is under my AO3 account (my names are different under the two accounts, sorry for the confusion!) But I SUPER appreciate you taking the time to let me know.

 **Forbritisheyeson**  – thanks so much! I'm a huge fan of unreliable narrators. Did this chapter give you a better opinion of Gendry? ;) I wasn't able to get through everything, unfortunately (I tap out of my chapters out at 11k words LOL), but you'll see more of the Gendrya moments and their fluffy bits and what the spy really saw in the next chapter (if I ever get around to getting it posted LOL).

 **tinkbell86**  – despite the fact that I am like a super happy-go-lucky person, I find that I  _always_ write super dark stuff on ffn (which if you've seen some of my other fics, you'll totally understand). I literally don't think I am capable of writing pure fluff, and I'm not sure why *shrugs* But hopefully this level of darkness was tolerable? Thanks for taking the time to review!

 **AllIdiotsMustDie**  – LOL happy to surprise! There wasn't too much Cersei POV in this chapter, but hopefully you thought the Cersei and Arya interaction was okay? So unfortunately, Gendry isn't Ramsay-level psychopath. He is definitely messed up in the head, BUT no promises for when he comes back from the Great Games (dun dun duhhhh). What did you think of him now that you have some of his POV? More Gendrya to come in Part 2! Thanks for the review!

 **Alanna Mayfield**  – thanks for taking the time to review! How did you like the gendrya so far? It'll be a but more fluffy in Part 2 when we get some of their secret meeting scenes post-Baelish and post-**other event that happens that I don't want to spoil**

 **staleyj33**  –I am so sorry I couldn't get to the meat of the Sansa arc in this part! It's coming up in part 2, and if you're a tragedy and Sansa fan, you will (hopefully) love the big showdown! I think her POV will come as a bit of a surprise to everyone. Thanks for your review!

 **ChrissyBellaDiva**  – I totally know what you mean by getting pre-episode and post-episode GendryXArya fixes. I mean 8x02?! Thank you so much for your kind review. I feel like I may have come across a bit heavy handed at some point during this chapter, and I had initially planned on tackling the whole West vs Other more tactfully, but honestly, after 6 hours of writing I just wrote. I'll probably come back some day and refine it a bit. You'll totally see more Gendry and Arya next chapter, what did you think of them in Part 1?

 **greatinthought**  – LOL hopefully this chapter clarified some of Gendry's character. Like yup, he's messed up (who wouldn't be, growing up with this version of Tywin and Cersei), but totally not Ramsay-level. And he is definitely still a bit rough around the edges, and I can't promise that part is going to see any improvement after he gets the trauma of the games on top of everything else *author ducks away in shame *. How did you like his POV in Part 1? Thanks for your review!

 **Laurenbull**  – squealllllll thank you : ) ! Oh Tywin's ending in this fic is a good dose of karmic justice, I promise. So the attack culprit was revealed – guessing it was a bit of a surprise ; ) We'll be seeing more of Ned and Ramsay too, don't worry. How did you like the Gendry and Arya bits in part 1? Thanks for your review!

 **SortofGuest**  – Thanks for your review! You got a peak at the depth in Part 1, but IMO, I think the Arya & Sansa background is a bit more heart-wrenching (which should hopefully be revealed fully in Part 2, maybe might have to carry over to Chapter 5 if I get there). As a cannon fan, hopefully you liked the shout out to Duncan and Jenny's story twisted to fit the Dayne House ;P By the end of the chapter I am now very interested in finding out this hidden depth to Gendry, Arya, and what has happened to and between them. I hope to read more soon.

 **Egracesamples**  – wish granted LOL, for Part 1 at least ; )

 **Ichiruki41** – see my  **tinkbell86** comment re: my inability to not right dark LOL. SO happy you gave it a shot and enjoyed it! Took your advice regarding changing up the summary. Thoughts on the new one? Thanks for your review :D


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